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While Vallejo's finances were plunging faster than a roller coaster at the Six Flags amusement park, the city's firefighters were going abalone diving, grilling tri-tip and drinking cocktails on the public's dime, records show.
Under their contract, the firefighters union has been allowed since 2003 to charge the city 600 hours a year - at a cost of more than $24,000 annually - for union activities that were approved by the union's chief. The junkets included an annual Seafood Extravaganza at the fairgrounds, a 10-kilometer run ending with a party at the amusement park and a dunk tank at the Waterfront Festival.
The Solano County grand jury blasted the fire union's unusual business-leave arrangement in a 2006 report, as did an Oakland attorney hired by the city in November. But firefighters say they used the time to raise money for Little League, Boys and Girls Clubs and other local charities.
"Was it true we had a cocktail every now and then? Absolutely. Were we out boozing and not coming back (to work) because we were hung over? Absolutely not," union President Kurt Henke said Tuesday. "It's no different than going to a business lunch or reception."
Dwindling tax revenue and ballooning public safety expenses have put Vallejo on the brink of becoming the largest city in California to declare bankruptcy. Officials there have until April 22 to devise a long-term plan to stave off financial ruin.
Public safety workers' salaries are being cut, two firehouses have been closed, 12 police officer positions are being eliminated, and city staff members will be laid off. In addition, funding to senior centers, libraries, museums and other amenities is being slashed to zero.
Practice criticized
"I think city-funded union business leave needs to be abolished," City Councilwoman Stephanie Gomes said Tuesday. "It's an obvious violation of public trust and a misuse of public funds."
Katy Meissner, a community activist, said the firefighters' paid leave angers residents who are dealing with dwindling public services.
"You have this group that's been going fishing and drinking and doing charity dunk tanks on city time. It's pretty despicable," Meissner said.
City and union leaders last week whittled the 600-hour cap to 500 hours and limited the activities to firefighter and union conventions. Still, the allowance is more generous than those in many other Bay Area cities.
In Hayward, firefighters hold about 600 hours' worth of charity golf tournaments and fundraisers each year, but they use time donated from their own vacation and compensatory-time allowances. In San Francisco, the firefighters' contract doesn't limit the number of hours for union business leave, but the fire chief must approve the time off.
In Oakland, the firefighters union gets 576 hours a year of such leave, but it is split among 504 union members - roughly six times the number in Vallejo. Even then, the hours are rarely used because they must be approved by the chief and the individuals must pay their own expenses, said Donna Hom, the fire department's chief financial officer.
In its report, the county grand jury slammed Vallejo's firefighters for charging full 24-hour shifts for union business when they used a few hours for an activity. The report added that the city had to pay replacement workers overtime at time-and-a-half to fill in.
In the city-funded private investigation, attorney Douglas Freifeld described the union leaders as "unapologetic" about using city time for charity events, dinners and political campaigning.
"The fire chief's 'hands-off' approach to (union business leave) was taken advantage of by union leadership to greatly, albeit not openly, expand the utilization of (such leave)," Freifeld wrote.
Union president's response
Henke called both reports "absolutely biased." The city has long been trying to break the union, he said, and often seeks damaging information to erode public support during contract negotiations.
"They hired an investigator to come up with a predetermined result," he said. "They want to make it look like we did something wrong. We did nothing wrong."
From 2000 to 2006, the Vallejo Firefighters Local 1186 and the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce threw an annual Seafood Extravaganza and happy hour at McCormack Hall at the county fairgrounds in Vallejo.
Henke said several firefighters are licensed abalone divers who took union business time to harvest the prized shellfish off the North Coast before the event. Proceeds typically amounted to between $8,000 and $10,000, Henke said, which was split between the chamber and donations to charities.
Firefighters also would barbecue tri-tip steak for the party, which typically drew about 400 people paying $60 per ticket.
"We had to stop because it was getting to be too much work," said Connie Howard, the chamber's community promotions coordinator. "But it was fun. And the food was fabulous. It took us a week to recover."
City and union leaders are meeting almost daily, furiously trying to renegotiate the fire and police contracts in advance of the April 22 bankruptcy deadline. The talks are confidential, and neither side will say if union business leave is under negotiation. | {
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OUTRAGEOUSThis past Sunday, a Jewish man was physically assaulted in Montréal.The incident occurred at the 4 towers condos in Ville St Laurent.Security footage shows a taxi (#1258 of Taxi Champlain) drop someone off near the entrance to the condo’s garage. He then waits, blocking the garage entrance.Aaron* (name changed per request) was visiting his elderly parents who own a condo in the building.He parked his white car in a spot that wouldn’t block anyone and waited for an outdoor spot to become available. As he waited, he watched as a car driven by a Jewish man wearing a Kippah pulled up behind the taxi and honked.According to Aaron, the driver of the taxi shouted, “I won’t move for any f***ing Jews!” He then told Aaron to move his car.Aaron, who was in his car facing the taxi, asked the driver to please move for the vehicle behind him, and told him that he could get the message across without using insults.According to Aaron, the driver immediately started shouting in English and Arabic (two languages Aaron speaks). “I’ll never move for you f***ing dirty Jews! I’m going to f***ing kill you!”At that point a parking spot opened and a female supervisor from the condos motioned that Aaron should park.He pulled into a spot and decided to snap a photo of the taxi’s number so he could report the antisemitic tirade to Champlain Taxi.As soon as he snapped a picture the driver stormed out his taxi and began physically assaulting Aaron. He reportedly shoved Aaron against a car, put him in a headlock, and punched him in his chest and face at least ten times before the parking supervisor intervened.Aaron is a short man and the driver was tall and well built. The driver allegedly kept shouting antisemitic slurs and threatening to murder Aaron as he beat him. He also smashed Aaron’s phone on the ground, breaking it.The woman who intervened was also reportedly struck by the taxi driver who only left after another taxi driver told him to stop.After the attack, Aaron went to his parents, bleeding and in terrible pain. He later visited the hospital due to massive pains in his chest area.A police report has been filed and a complaint has been lodged with Taxi Champlain. B'nai Brith Canada has also been notified.
Posted by Bill613.com on Wednesday, July 31, 2019 | {
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After 100-plus days of no NHL hockey, the World Junior Hockey Championships have arrived at quite the right time. This isn’t to say that the variety of North American and international hockey leagues haven’t been giving hockey fans what they need, but a talent showcase such as the WJHC speaks for itself.
Last year’s tournament featured a plethora of young talent (both drafted and undrafted) looking to impress their respective professional teams or improve their draft stock, and this year’s competition will undoubtedly feature more of the same.
In particular, the New York Islanders will be getting a chance to see how much further their 2011 and 2012 first round draft picks have developed. Ryan Strome recorded nine points (3 Goals, 6 Assists) at the 2012 WJHC and led the charge for Islanders prospects who participated in the event, but the young center shouldn’t be the lone player that Islanders fans direct their attention to in the next several days.
Griffin Reinhart, the Isles’ first selection in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft, will be teamed up with Strome on Team Canada, and his defensive skills will be put to the test in his first WJHC appearance.
While Reinhart and Strome’s play for Team Canada will be a focal point for the Islanders organization, Ville Pokka will likely be just as closely monitored for his second tour in as many years with Team Finland.
All in all, three prospects will be representing the New York Islanders at the 2013 WJHC, and fans will have a chance to get to know some of these fresh faces a bit better in the coming days.
The Repeat Offender
Team Canada’s 2013 WJHC roster is littered with names, both recurring and new, that hockey fans can recognize in an instant.
Nate MacKinnon, Jonathan Huberdeau, Malcolm Subban, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jonathan Drouin, Dougie Hamilton, and Mark Scheifele are just a few of the names that will be talked about for the duration of this year’s WJHC tournament, but Ryan Strome will be expected to duplicate, if not exceed, his 2012 performance for Team Canada in Alberta.
After finishing the 2012 WJHC as one of Team Canada’s leading point scorers, Strome simply proceeded to record 68 points (30 Goals, 38 Assists) for the Niagara IceDogs of the OHL.
While Strome’s point totals and games played were limited last year because of a brief stint with the Islanders, and a sucker punch courtesy of Brody Silk, the forward has positioned himself to have quite an impressive 2012-2013 OHL season as he has registered 62 points (22 Goals, 40 Assists) in only 32 regular season games thus far.
A WJHC veteran such as Strome might not necessarily be expected to prove himself at this year’s tournament, but hockey fans and members of the Islanders organization will be looking to see what improvements the center has made in his game.
Strome’s offensive talents, coupled with his play-making abilities, have made him one of the premier prospects in the Islanders’ pipeline, but his strength has been questioned over the years. Much like John Tavares, Strome will have to answer questions about his strength, or lack thereof, through his play on the ice.
Using a strong performance at the WJHC to one’s advantage has always been a usable formula for top prospects. Ryan Strome might not have much left to prove offensively, as he collected a third of his 2012 WJHC point totals in Canada’s opening game against Germany, but some stronger play on the puck might go a long way for the forward. Despite the fact that one can only gauge Strome’s performance to a certain extent since he is playing against teenage competition, the 2013 WJHC will be a huge stage for New York’s brightest prospect as he looks to cement his name on a professional roster sooner rather than later.
For those who missed Strome’s first goal of the tourney, check out the video below:
Blueline Bombers
Griffin Reinhart and Ville Pokka might be on two different ends of the spectrum when Islanders fans try to pick apart the prospects, but there is ample reason to be intrigued and excited by the two aforementioned defenders.
While Reinhart has been a staple in the WHL with the Edmonton Oil Kings for the last three seasons, Pokka’s development within the SM-liiga might be perceived as going a bit slower when compared to Reinhart. Reinhart displayed incremental point improvement in his first two seasons in the WHL and was rewarded for it when he was named captain of the Edmonton Oil Kings in time for the 2012-2013 WHL season.
Since Reinhart will be playing in his first ever WJHC tournament, expectations for the defender might be a bit tempered, but fans should not be surprised to see the defenseman show off a well-rounded skill set throughout Team Canada’s stay at the WJHC.
On the other hand, Ville Pokka is no stranger to international competition and WJHC play. After registering four points in seven games played at the 2012 WJHC, Pokka was drafted in the second round by the New York Islanders during the 2012 NHL Entry Draft.
The Finnish defender has already tallied an assist in Finland’s first contest of the tournament, and the development of the prospect on the international stage will likely draw a fair amount of interest from Islanders fans and executives. Pokka has shown steady progress with Karpat of the SM-liiga over the last two seasons, but his international experience should come in handy when the time for evaluating prospects comes around.
Prospects such as Griffin Reinhart and Ville Pokka might not draw as much attention as Ryan Strome, but the Islanders certainly have a more-than-formidable trio of players representing them at this year’s tournament.
One thing is certain: If the Islanders organization and their fans want to see what stock the team has invested for the near future, then they need to look no further than the 2013 WJHC.
How Does the Trio Stack Up?
Other than the New York Islanders, five other teams have a trio of prospects representing them at this year’s WJHC.
The Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Washington Capitals all have three players representing them at this year’s tournament, but the New York Islanders undoubtedly have one of the biggest offensive stars in their trio. Islanders fans and team executives have been patiently waiting for Strome to be NHL-ready, and the forward’s second straight WJHC selection to Team Canada only reinforced the hype surrounding the young center.
Teams such as the Pittsburgh Penguins, as well as the Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals, are also well represented at the WJHC in terms of offense and defense. Martin Frk, Xavier Ouellet, Teodors Blugers, Olli Maatta, and Filip Forsberg are just some of the names that will be representing one of the aforementioned teams at this year’s tournament, but the crop of Islanders players should not be lost in the bunch.
Ryan Strome’s name probably speaks for itself at this point, but that doesn’t mean that Griffin Reinhart and Ville Pokka should be overlooked. Reinhart and Pokka might not make jaw-dropping plays that astound the viewing public, but the two players are solid defenders in their own right and it will be interesting to see how the two deal with their respective workloads at this year’s competition.
While it is hard to definitively say which team has the best trio of prospects at this year’s WJHC, the New York Islanders certainly have a capable group of young players representing them in Ufa, Russia.
Islanders fans have constantly been hearing and talking about the prospects that the team has available in its pipeline, and the 2013 WJHC should give fans a glimpse as to what these players might be able to bring to the professional level in the near future. | {
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HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - High-resolution satellite images show that the construction of China’s first full-sized aircraft carrier is progressing steadily alongside expansive infrastructure work that analysts say suggests the ship will be the first of several large vessels produced at the site.
FILE PHOTO: A combination image of satellite photos shows Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, China on October 3, 2018, April 17, 2019 and September 18, 2019. Mandatory credit CSIS/ChinaPower/Maxar Technologies and Airbus 2019/Handout via REUTERS
The images of the Jiangnan shipyard outside Shanghai were taken last month and provided to Reuters by the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), building on satellite photos it obtained in April and September last year.
Noting a series of pre-fabricated sections, bulkheads and other components stacked nearby, CSIS analysts say the hull should be finished within 12 months, after which it is likely to be moved to a newly created harbor and wharf before being fitted out.
The vast harbor on the Yangtze River estuary, including a wharf nearly 1 kilometer long and large buildings for manufacturing ship components, is nearly complete. Much of the harbor area appeared to be abandoned farmland just a year ago, according to earlier images CSIS analyzed.
It dwarfs an existing harbor nearby, where destroyers and other warships are docked.
“We can see slow but steady progress on the hull, but I think the really surprising thing these images show is the extensive infrastructure buildup that has gone on simultaneously,” said CSIS analyst Matthew Funaiole.
“It is hard to imagine all this is being done for just one ship,” he added. “This looks more like a specialized space for carriers and or other larger vessels.”
Singapore-based military analyst Collin Koh said the modern, purpose-built facility on a sparsely populated island in the Yangtze may provide better security than the congested shipyards of Dalian in northern China. It could also help deepen co-operation between commercial and military shipbuilders.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies noted this year that China’s military shipyards were focusing increasingly on larger surface warships, “adding to the sense that Chinese naval-capability development may be entering a new phase.”
Slideshow ( 4 images )
China’s navy has recently launched four large Type 055 cruisers and its first large helicopter carrier, known as the Type 075.
China’s military has not formally announced the plans for the third carrier, designated Type 002, but official state media have said it is being built.
The Pentagon said it in its annual survey of China’s military modernization, published in May, that work on the third carrier had begun.
China’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions from Reuters.
Funaiole said the latest images appeared to confirm the earlier photos, which suggested the latest carrier would be somewhat smaller the 100,000-tonne “supercarriers” operated by the U.S. but larger than France’s 42,500-tonne Charles de Gaulle.
The images are due to be released by the CSIS China Power Project later Thursday.
Asian and Western militaries are tracking developments closely. They say this carrier would represent a vital step in China’s ambitions to create a far-ranging navy that can project power around the world to serve Beijing’s expanding global interests.
A series of recent Reuters Special Reports showed how that effort is challenging decades of U.S. strategic superiority in East Asia.
(Click this link to read the series: here)
It is expected to be China’s first carrier with a flat deck and catapult launch system, allowing the use of a wider range of aircraft and more heavily armed fighter jets.
China’s first two carriers, which it has dubbed Type 001-class, are relatively small, accommodating only up to 25 aircraft that are launched from ramps built onto their decks. U.S. carriers routinely deploy with nearly four times the number of aircraft.
Foreign military attaches and security analysts say the Type 001 ships are expected to essentially serve as training platforms for what they believe will be fleet of up to six operational carriers by 2030.
They say the construction and deployment of aircraft carriers is considered exceptionally difficult to master. Protecting such a large and vital surface target with escort ships, submarines and aircraft is a core part of the problem.
“The PLA navy is not saying much in detail about its plans now, but we can see from their building works that their ambitions are vast,” said one Asian military attache, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter. “And they will get there.”
Koh, a research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the new Jiangnan facilities looked permanent and reflected China’s long-held ambitions to bulk up its fleet with more carriers and other large vessels.
“We are talking about infrastructure being built quickly and on a large scale. It could well be the start of a ‘factory,’ if you like, for carriers and other very large vessels,” he said. | {
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The Seoul Station Overpass, once a driveway passing through the heart of Seoul, is set to transform into a brand-new citizen’s park.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government said the newly renovated overpass will be open to the public on May 20. The structure comes with the new name “Seoullo 7017,” combining the year 1970 when it was first built and 2017 -- when it was remodeled to be a pedestrian-friendly road.
The overpass had been used as a major driveway connecting Mapo-gu, western Seoul, and Jung-gu, central Seoul, for 40 years. However, as it deteriorated in the 1990s, citizens strongly called for its removal. In 2006, a safety assessment classified the outdated overpass as dangerous.
In 2014, the city of Seoul came up with a basic plan to develop the road into a public park. The next year, it announced the “Seoul Station 7017 Project.”
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon plans to turn the 1.15-kilometer overpass into a rest area and tourist attraction. (Yonhap) | {
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Editor’s Note: In April, Making Sen$e reported on Initiative 732, which proposes imposing a tax on carbon emissions in Washington state. The carbon tax would be revenue-neutral. That is, the revenue from the tax on carbon emissions would go to reduce other taxes in the state — most notably, the sales tax and the business tax. The initiative has gained support from unlikely places, chief among them, Gregory Mankiw, a conservative economist and former head of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. Below, Mankiw explains why he and other economists of different political persuasions support the carbon tax and why certain environmental groups don’t.
Ahead of the Nov. 8 vote, the future of the initiative is uncertain — the most recent poll showed 42 percent in favor and 37 percent against. For more on the topic, tune in to tonight’s Making Sen$e report, which airs every Thursday on the PBS NewsHour. The following text has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
— Kristen Doerer, Making Sen$e Editor
GREGORY MANKIW: The first principle of economics is that people respond to incentives. What carbon tax tries to do is try to harness that principle to get people to reduce their carbon footprint.
PAUL SOLMAN: And the incentive is…
GREGORY MANKIW: Any time you put carbon in the atmosphere, you’re going to pay a price for it. So if you drive your car a little bit more, you’re going to pay a little bit more for that. If you use a little more electricity generated by coal, you’re going to pay a price for that. So what we want to do is we want to give people price incentives to reduce the amount of carbon they emit into the atmosphere.
READ MORE: Washington state’s carbon-tax plan, cartoonified
PAUL SOLMAN: And carbon is what economists call a negative externality, right?
GREGORY MANKIW: That’s right. Scientists tell us that carbon released into the atmosphere has adverse effects on the climate. That is a classic example of a negative externality, meaning a side effect associated with a certain form of economic activity. What economists want to do is they want to internalize the externality. That means they want people to pay for the adverse side effects. When you have a side effect on somebody else, you pay for it, so you take that into account when you make your day-to-day decisions.
PAUL SOLMAN: So if I use energy that comes from some source that generates carbon — a bad thing — you want me to pay for the bad and you do that by imposing a tax.
“When you go buy a good, you pay for the resources that go into producing that good….When you emit carbon, you are basically using up a resource, a valuable social resource.”
GREGORY MANKIW: Exactly. When you go buy a good, you pay for the resources that go into producing that good. So if something’s made out of metal, you pay for the metal indirectly through the price of that product. When you emit carbon, you are basically using up a resource, a valuable social resource, which is the atmosphere, and what we want you to do is to pay for that resource you use up when you are buying that high carbon-intensive product.
PAUL SOLMAN: So a carbon tax seems to be a good thing. Why is there so much opposition to it?
GREGORY MANKIW: Well, there are some people who don’t believe that climate change is real. But scientists tell us that is not the case, so I take the scientists at their word. Some people are afraid that if we have a carbon tax, people are going to use it as an excuse for more taxes and bigger government. And that doesn’t have to be the case. A carbon tax can be revenue neutral, meaning that you impose a carbon tax on carbon-intensive goods and use that tax revenue to refund it by reducing other taxes or by giving people a carbon dividend.
“I view this as a conservative approach to dealing with climate change.”
PAUL SOLMAN: And that’s how the referendum in Washington state is written, so that it’s revenue neutral?
GREGORY MANKIW: That’s right. They’re going to impose a tax on carbon, and they’re going to get more money from that, and they’re going to reduce other taxes, largely the sales tax. So you will pay more when you buy a carbon-intensive good, but you will pay less when you buy lots of other goods that aren’t carbon intensive, because the sales tax will have gone down.
PAUL SOLMAN: There’s an argument as to whether that’s going to generate or decrease economic activity in general, right?
GREGORY MANKIW: Well, there is some debate about that, and what it’s going to really do is shift economic activity away from high carbon-intensive activities towards low carbon-intensive activities. As long as it’s revenue neutral or approximately so, it shouldn’t have an overall macroeconomic impact. It’s going to change the composition of what we’re doing away from stuff that’s harming the environment towards stuff that’s cleaner.
PAUL SOLMAN: You are a Republican, head of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and you’re in favor of this, while almost every environmental group is against it. How can that be?
GREGORY MANKIW: One reason I’m in favor of a carbon tax, even though I view myself as a conservative, is that I view this as a conservative approach to dealing with climate change. The alternative to giving the people the right incentives and letting them make free choices is to regulate their behavior and that’s what we’ve been doing to a large extent for a variety of pro-environmental regulations. If we give people the right incentive with the carbon tax, then a lot of those regulations will become unnecessary because people are automatically incentivized to do the right thing.
“If we give people the right incentive with the carbon tax, then a lot of those regulations will become unnecessary because people are automatically incentivized to do the right thing.”
Now the reason that some of the environmental left is opposed to this is that they don’t like the fact that it is revenue neutral. Some people see this carbon tax as a way to fund projects that they would like to have funded, so they see it as one vehicle for larger government. My perspective, I view this as a way to clean up the environment without expanding government by shifting from one kind of tax to another kind of tax.
PAUL SOLMAN: So you’re not surprised that environmental groups are against this?
GREGORY MANKIW: I am somewhat surprised because I think if their main interest is cleaning up the environment, this is the right thing to do. I think economists from right, left and the center view carbon taxes as the most effective policy for reducing carbon emissions, so therefore, I think anyone worried about climate change should gravitate towards this. | {
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Why does the Right keep winning in American politics, sometimes through electoral victories, sometimes by having the Democrats and others on the Left adopt what were traditionally right-wing policies and perspectives? Sure, I know that progressives won some important local battles in 2014: A few towns in California, Texas, and Ohio banned fracking. A few towns in Ohio, Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois supported ballot measures to overturn Citizens United. Richmond, California, stood up to Chevron, and Berkeley stood up to “Big Soda.”
But the overall direction of the country for the past forty years has given increasing strength to right-wing politicians in the Republican Party and opportunists in the Democratic Party who effectively do much of the same work that these right-wingers would do when they win political power. So why has this been happening? And why do so many people end up voting to elect politicians who are committed to enacting policies that hurt the economic well-being of a significant section (not the majority, but many) of the people who voted for them?
I asked this question first to thousands of people whom my research team and I encountered when I was Principal Investigator for an NIMH-sponsored study about how to deal with stress at work and stress in family life. At the time Ronald Reagan was president and he had won in part by winning many votes of middle-income working people.
The answer given by the media then, and often proffered today as well by the Democrats is, “It’s the economy, stupid.” They didn’t give that explanation up when Reaganomics produced heavy economic losses for working people who continued to vote Republican, and they didn’t give that explanation up when the Clinton/Gore years produced a booming economy and yet Gore lost (OK, he won but for the Supreme Court, but that was only made possible because of how close the vote was—and why would it have been so close if “the economy” is the determining issue?)
Nor am I convinced when recent statisticians show that those with the least income give ten votes to Democrats to every eight they give to Republicans, thus supposedly showing that people always vote their economic interests. The issue remains: those whose economic interests are not served by a politics that caters to the wealthy (those eight who vote Republican when the Republicans over and over again try to dismantle economic programs that might help them) continue to support those politicians, and that gives the Right the electoral edge it would never have on the grounds of its policies (most people who vote for them, according to recent polls, don’t agree with their specific policy positions).
What my research team discovered was the following:
1. Most Americans work in an economy that teaches them the common sense of global capitalism: “Everyone is out for themselves and will seek to advance their own interests without regard to your well-being, so the only rational path is for you to seek to advance your own interests in the same way. Those who have more money and power than you have are just better at seeking their own self-interest, because this is a meritocratic society in which you end up where you deserve to end up, so stop whining about the differences in wealth and power, because if you deserved more you would have more.”
2. Now here is the central contradiction: most people hate this kind of reality. They believe that it is in stark contrast to the values they would like to live by but simultaneously they also believe that the logic of capitalist society is the only possible reality, and that they would be fools not to try to live by it in every part of their lives. This message is reinforced in our workplaces and also by almost every sitcom and television news story available. But most people hate that this is the case. They often will tell you, “Everyone is selfish and materialistic, so I’d be a fool to be the one person who is caring for others in a world where everyone is just out for themselves.” Unconsciously, many people adopt the values of the marketplace, and these values have a corrosive impact on their own friendships, relationships, and family life.
3. So when many Americans encounter a different reality in right-wing churches that have specialized in creating supportive communities, they feel much more addressed there than they’ve ever felt in progressive movements that focus on economic entitlements or political rights and sometimes disintegrate due to internal tensions over dynamics of relative privilege and unproductive feelings of guilt. Only rarely do these liberal or progressive movements actually manifest a loving community that seems to care specifically about the people who come to their public talks or gatherings—the experience is more about hearing a good speech than about encountering people who want to know who you are and what you need—precisely what happens in most right-wing churches.
Is it really a surprise that people who so rarely encounter this kind of caring among the people with whom they work or the people whom they see angling for power or sexual conquest in the movies and TV would feel more seen and recognized for having some value in the Right than in much of the Left? Sadly, the cost of belonging to those right-wing churches is this: that they demean or put-down those deemed to be “Other”—those who are not part of their community. These “others” (including feminists, African Americans, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and increasingly all liberals) are blamed for the ethos of selfishness and breakdown of loving relationships and families. This is ironic because in fact the breakdown of loving relationships is largely a product of the increasing internalization of the utilitarian or instrumental way people have come to view each other, a product of bringing home into personal life, friendships, and marriages the very values that the Right esteems and champions in the competitive economy.
4. The Democrats, and most of the Left, have little understanding of this dynamic and rarely position themselves as the voice challenging the values of the marketplace or the instrumental way of thinking that is the produce of the materialism and selfishness of the competitive marketplace. So even when facing huge political setbacks, as in the 2014 midterm elections, you will hear the smartest of liberals and progressives acknowledging that what is needed is some kind of unifying worldview that the Democrats have failed to articulate in the six years that they have occupied the White House and had the majority in the House of Representatives. They imagine that if they can put forward a pro-working class economic program, that will be sufficient to change the dynamics of American politics.
They are right that they need a coherent vision, but it can’t solely be an economic populism. What people need to hear is an account of the way the suffering they experience in their personal lives, the breakdown of families, the loneliness and inability to trust other people, the sense of being surrounded by selfish and materialistic people, and the self-blaming they experience when their own relationships feel less fulfilling than they had hoped for are all a product of the triumph of the way people have internalized the values of the capitalist marketplace. This suffering can only be overcome when the capitalist system itself is replaced by one based on love, caring, kindness, generosity and a New Bottom Line that no longer judges corporations, government policies, or social institutions as “efficient,” “productive” or “rational” solely by the extent to which they maximize money or power. Instead, liberals and progressives need to be advocating a New Bottom Line that focuses on how much any given institution or economic or social policy or practice tends to maximize our capacities to be loving and caring, kind and generous, environmentally responsible, and capable of transcending a narrow utilitarian attitude toward other human beings and capable of responding to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and beauty of all that is.
Progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party need to develop a Spiritual Covenant that can apply this New Bottom Line to every aspect of our society—our economy, our corporations, our educational system, our legal system. In short, a progressive worldview that deeply rejects the way most of our institutions today teach people the values of “looking out for number one” and maximizing one’s own material well being without regard to the consequences for others or for the environment. Armed with an alternative worldview, progressives would have a chance of helping working people stop blaming themselves for their situation, stop blaming some other, and see that it is the whole system that needs a fundamental makeover.
But many liberals and progressives are religiophobic and thus believe that talk of love and caring is mere psycho-babble. As a result they cede to the Right the values issues rather than providing an alternative set of values in which love and generosity and caring for the Earth would take center place. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives have developed a model of what it would look like to put values such as love and caring into political practice. Doing so would include implementing a Global Marshall Plan and passing an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The latter amendment would require that all state and federal elections be financed solely through public funding—all other monies would be totally banned. The amendment would also require any corporation with an income above $50 million/year that is operating or selling its services or products within the U.S. to get a new corporate charter once every five years. Such charters would only be granted to those that could prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a panel of ordinary citizens who would also hear the testimony of people around the world who have been impacted by the policies, behavior, and advertising of those corporations. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives have also begun professional task forces to envision what each profession would look like if they were in fact governed by The New Bottom Line. Read more at spiritualprogressives.org.
The environmental movement had the possibility of helping people make this transition in consciousness had it focused more on helping people see that the planet is not just an economic “resource,” but a living being that nurtures and sustains life and which appropriately would engender awe, wonder, and radical amazement, and hence celebration of the universe of which it is a part. But in order to be “realistic,” most major environmental organizations, and even most of the local anti-fracking and local-oriented environmental initiatives have avoided this spiritual dimension, instead framing their issues in narrow self-interest terms that are then countered by the supporters of fracking, pipelines, and other environmentally destructive approaches by pointing out that these approaches can generate jobs and revenues. Stick to framing things on narrow and short-term material self-interest terms, and the corporate apologists have a plausible if misleading argument. It’s only when you address the environment in terms of the New Bottom Line that you can provide a way to reach people who otherwise get attracted to the arguments of the Right.
What the Left keeps on missing is that people have a set of spiritual needs—for a life of meaning and purpose that transcends the logic of the competitive marketplace and its ethos of materialism and selfishness, for communities that address those needs, and for loving friends and families that are best sustained when they share some higher vision than self-interest. The reason that the gay and lesbian struggle for marriage equality went from seeming impossibly utopian to winning in a majority of states in a very short while was that the proponents of that struggle switched their rhetoric from “we demand our equal rights” to “we are loving people who want our love to flourish and be supported in this society.” That same kind of switch toward higher values and purpose, and touching into our shared desire for loving and caring world, could make the Left a winner again, instead of a consistent loser.
5. Nothing alienates middle-income working people more than the usual reason progressives and liberals give for why they are losing elections or failing to gain more support for their programs: namely, that Americans are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or just plain dumb. Most Americans may not know the details of the programs put forward by political movements or parties, by they know when they are being demeaned, and that is precisely what gives the Right the ability to describe the Left as “elitist,” thereby obscuring the way right-wing politics serves the real elites of wealth and power.
And then radio and TV right-wingers effectively mobilize the anger and frustration people feel at living in a society where love and caring are so hard to come by—against the Left! This is the ultimate irony: the capitalist marketplace generates a huge amount of anger, but with its meritocratic fantasy it convinces people that it is their own failings that are to blame for why their lives don’t feel more fulfilling. So that anger is internalized and manifests in alcoholism, drug abuse, violence in families, high rates of divorce, road rage, and support for militaristic ventures around the world.
The Right mobilizes this anger—and directs it against liberals and progressives. And that actually feels great for many people, because it relieves their self-blaming and allows them to express their frustrations (though sadly at the wrong targets). Only a movement that understands all these dynamics, and can help people understand that their anger is appropriate but that it is wrongly directed can progressives hope to win against the Right.
But instead of addressing that anger against the political and economic system, the Democrats are often seen as champions of the existing system (and not mistakenly when President Obama seems more interested in serving the interests of the 1 percent than in challenging the distortions of the banks and the investment companies and the powerful corporations. All the worse that after the 2014 election, Obama is once again talking about finding common ground with the Republicans—that has guided his policies for the past six years. Democrats keep on thinking that if they look more like the Right, they’ll win more credibility. All they win is the disdain of the majority.
6. As if all this weren’t bad enough, the Obama presidency has put the final blow to liberals and progressives by eliciting hope in a different kind of world, then capitulating to the special interests. People who allowed themselves to hope in 2008 may need decades of recovery time till they can again believe in any political path—or we need psycho-spiritual progressive therapists who can help us build an alternative both insides and outside the Democratic Party. We need to speak honestly about this disillusionment and help people feel less humiliated that they believed in Obama’s rhetoric of hope. And we need to show that many people who at first seem impossibly right-wing actually want a world of love and caring too, and have never heard liberals and progressives speak that kind of language.
7. The first step in recovery is to create large public gatherings at which liberals and progressives can mourn our losses, acknowledge the many mistakes we’ve made in the past decades, and then develop a strategy for how most effectively to challenge the assumptions of the capitalist marketplace that are shared by too many who otherwise think of themselves as progressives. Without this kind of a recovery process, we are likely to end up with more and deeper despair in 2016 and beyond.
Our Network of Spiritual Progressives is taking a step in this direction by trying to reach out to people in every ethnicity, race, and faith or atheist community, and inviting you to the University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California, on December 14 for a one-day gathering (starting after church to respect those who go to pray on Sunday mornings) to discuss these issues and to start developing a winning strategy for healing and transforming our world. We will post more info at spiritualprogressives.org starting next week (November 20).
If you live in another state and want to attend something like this, then work to assemble a large group of people. If you do so, we will come to your part of the country to shape a discussion of this sort for the people you know. We need hundreds of such meetings to help reorient the liberal and progressive forces, not discounting all that they are doing, but only seeking to help them integrate into that work a shared worldview (the New Bottom Line) and a psycho-spiritual sensitivity that will make them far more effective.
We’re happy to also publicize other gatherings sponsored in any place in the United States where people are willing to see how badly we need a fundamental rethinking of the assumptions that have led liberals and progressives to become so unsuccessful in capturing the imagination and loyalty of the American people. | {
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MINSK (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday a tax on those not in full-time employment should not be enforced this year, after widespread public opposition to the levy led to the biggest protests in years.
Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a news conference in Minsk, Belarus February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Nikolai Petrov/BelTA/Pool
Popularly known as the “law against social parasites” it requires those who work less than 183 days per year to pay the government $250 in compensation for lost taxes.
It has gone down badly with the Belarussian public at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet after more than two years of economic recession.
A protest against the tax in Minsk last month drew around 2,000 people, the largest demonstration in the country for six years. Similar protests have since been held beyond the capital and more were planned by the opposition for March.
“We will not collect this money for 2016 from those who were meant to pay it,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency Belta in a rare concession to public outcry.
Lukashenko, who once described himself as the “last dictator in Europe,” has run the Belarussian economy along Soviet-style command lines since 1994.
He said the authorities could make amendments to the tax, but would not scrap it entirely.
Seeking to improve ties with the European Union and lessen Belarus’s dependence on Russia, Lukashenko has over the past year heeded calls from the West to show greater lenience towards political opposition.
Lukashenko said those who have already paid the ‘parasite’ tax for 2016 would be reimbursed if they find a job in 2017.
According to the last tax inspection, 470,000 people should have paid the tax, but only 50,000 have done so, generating just $8 million in extra revenue for the government.
The country has been in recession since 2015 due to a slump in oil prices and contagion from an economic crisis in neighboring Russia, with which its economy is closely tied and where many Belarussians work in order to send money home.
The average monthly salary has fallen from an all-time high of $630 in mid-2014 to $380 as of the start of 2017. | {
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Taz says you might see him—or hear him—back in the commentary booth somewhere in 2020, but he’s enjoying what he sees from some of AEW’s key pieces.
Taz, a noted Buffalo Bills fan, was more than kind enough to give me (a lowly New York Jets fan) some time during Starrcast IV to talk about the big wrestling weekend that took place in Baltimore.
Before he surprised people at AEW Full Gear by showing up to do joint commentary with Excalibur and Golden Boy during the Buy-In for the Britt Baker and Bea Priestley match, Taz expressed getting the bug to saddle back up behind the booth by the time 2020 rolls around.
“I’ve been having the bug back to do commentary again. I just, I miss it and I had a chance to do it on three matches. Excalibur and I did the commentary on that Dark episode that was in Philadelphia, I had a blast,” Taz said. “So we’ll see, maybe in 2020 you’ll hear Taz doing commentary again someplace.”
I noted Taz’s own unique wrestling style and asked who stood out to him as far as current talent goes, and the man who made FTW a mantra had very high praise for several of AEW talent, most notably MJF.
“A lot of people. There are a lot of super-talented people in the industry right now, but if we’re just speaking on AEW, I mean promo-wise,” Taz said, “a guy who I think is going to be a future world champion and he’s underratedly good in the ring at a young age, MJF does a tremendous job.”
Taz also very much digs what Orange Cassidy has been giving fans as well as the special presence that Jurassic Express provides for the wrestling world, noting how unique each of them are. Taz praised Cody as the obvious choice for the hottest babyface in the business right now and referred to Cody’s “silver spoon” promo when talking about how promos from the heart really deliver.
“The promo was awesome cause it was not written, it was from his heart. I can tell you, all those promos I cut with a towel on my head or in the ring in Philadelphia or in New York or wherever in ECW, that was from my heart,” Taz said. “When you cut a promo from your heart and there’s not writers and bosses up your rear end how to cut a promo and you have that passion and you have that anger, it comes out, we saw that in Cody on the last episode of Dynamite.”
We’ll see when Taz makes another run at commentary, but until then he can be heard on The Taz Show, with the latest episode featuring his Starrcast discussion with Jurassic Express as the latest episode. | {
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Manchester attack: Hate crime 'doubles' after incident Published duration 27 May 2017 Related Topics Manchester Arena attack
image copyright PA image caption Ian Hopkins said hate-filled views had no place in Greater Manchester
A bomb threat, racist taunts and graffiti are among a significant rise in hate crimes reported to Greater Manchester Police following Monday's attack, the BBC can reveal.
The force said the number of such reports had doubled to 56 on Wednesday, from the 28 reported on Monday.
Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said the force was "monitoring" the situation.
Former Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal said the attacker was a criminal not represented by any community.
Mr Afzal, who is also head of the Police and Crime Commissioners Association, said: "It is disappointing but it happens every time.
"After Brussels, after Paris, after the murder in Westminster....There is a spike...That is sad that people are targeting a whole community just because of the action of criminals, and they are criminals. They don't represent the community.
"Jo Cox's murderer doesn't represent the white community of this country, the KKK don't represent Christianity. But that said what we have to do is encourage people to come forward and report."
Muslim leaders claim more crimes are not reported because people are "scared to talk".
'Remain undivided'
Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said he could not make a "direct link" to the Manchester Arena bombing on Monday night in which 22 people died, seven of them children.
Mr Hopkins said: "Sadly we've seen an increase in hate incidents since the bomb from 28 on Monday, which is our normal average a day, through to 56 on Wednesday."
image copyright AFP image caption Balloons and floral tributes to the victims have been left in Manchester's St Ann's Square
A copy of a two-hourly GMP log of reported hate crimes on Wednesday, seen by the BBC, included the following incidents relating to race or religion:
A school received a bomb threat after some students were asked if they were Muslim
A pupil was followed and racially abused by a man carrying a metal bar
A bank teller was called a "terrorist" and blamed for the Manchester Arena attack by a person trying to open an account
A person was approached in a supermarket and told "shame on you for....what you did last night"
A woman at a supermarket was told she should not be wearing her niqab - a face veil - in public
Racist graffiti daubed outside a property in north Manchester
South Yorkshire Police also tweeted that officers there had "seen hate crimes increase since the Manchester attack" and Essex Police said they had also seen more such incidents since Monday, but added there was no evidence of a direct link to the attack.
Other forces have issued hate crime awareness advice and urged people to report any such incidents.
In Devon, police have started an investigation after three men hurled stones and shouted abuse at a congregation at the Torbay Islamic Centre early on Saturday.
Salman Abedi, a British-born Muslim from a Libyan family, blew himself up, killing 22 men, women and children, as people were leaving an Ariana Grande concert on Monday night.
A total of 66 people remain in hospital, with 23 in critical care.
'Not tolerated'
It was feared the attack might spark reprisals against Muslim people, but Mr Hopkins said the city had largely pulled together in the aftermath.
"We've seen that compassion but it is important that we continue to stand together here in Greater Manchester, particularly standing together against some of the hate-filled views that we have seen from a very small minority of the community that have no place here."
He added: "I have sent a personal message out to all the faith leaders and places of worship today and have thanked them for the support they have shown and stressed that hate crime will not be tolerated."
"It is important that people report any incidents so that they can be investigated and we can support victims and their families."
image copyright Various image caption School children, parents and friends were among the victims of Monday's bombing
Mohammed Ullah, Muslim chaplain at Manchester Metropolitan University, said he was not surprised at the figures quoted by the chief constable.
"These are just the reported figures, other people are very scared to talk," he said.
Mr Afzal added: "I'm absolutely in awe of the people of this city. I've been at various vigils over the last few days and the coming together, the solidarity, tolerance, the acceptance is awesome. | {
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GrowGen continues the execution of its acquisition plans to acquire the leading hydroponic stores in key markets. In 2017, Michigan generated approximately $711 million in medical marijuana sales a year and $21 million in tax revenue. If full legalization happens, that number is expected to surpass $1 billion in sales a year. Roughly 277,000 patients are registered with the state to grow their own cannabis or obtain it from 43,000 registered caregivers who can supply a limited number of people. The Michigan patient count is only 2nd to California.
GrowGen CEO Comments:
Commenting on GrowGen's purchase of Superior Growers Supply, Darren Lampert, Co-Founder and CEO, said, "SGS, one of the original hydroponic retailers, strongly positions GrowGen in the Michigan market and will add $4 Million to our top line revenue to our consolidated financial statements. Adding the team at SGS and its iconic stores, is a major win for GrowGen's portfolio. We have a strong acquisition pipeline and look forward to continuing our rapid expansion plans in 2018."
SGS CEO Comments:
Commenting on the sale of SGS, Jeffrey Gibson, CEO and Founder said, "In November of 1983, Superior Growers Supply (SGS) started as a mail order business operating out of a small barn. The first, and only, product available for sale was a 1000-watt metal halide light kit. Since that time SGS has become one of the leading retail hydroponic and indoor gardening supply merchants in the USA. We feel GrowGen is the company to continue our long-standing tradition of serving the growers in the Michigan market."
About GrowGeneration Corp.:
GrowGeneration Corp. ("GrowGen") owns and operates specialty retail hydroponic and organic gardening stores. Currently, GrowGen has 17 stores, which includes 8 locations in Colorado, 3 locations in Michigan, 2 locations in California, 2 locations in Nevada, 1 location in Rhode Island and 1 location in Washington. GrowGen carries and sells thousands of products, including organic nutrients and soils, advanced lighting technology and state of the art hydroponic equipment to be used indoors and outdoors by commercial and home growers. Our mission is to own and operate GrowGeneration branded stores in all the major legalized cannabis states. Management estimates that roughly 1,000 hydroponic stores are in operation in the U.S. By 2020 the market is estimated to reach over $23 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 32%.
Forward Looking Statements:
This press release may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgments, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this release. Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. When used herein, words such as "look forward," "believe," "continue," "building," or variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in any forward-looking statements made by us herein are often discussed in filings we make with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, available at: www.sec.gov, and on our website, at: www.growgeneration.com.
Connect:
Website: www.GrowGeneration.com
Facebook:GrowGenerationCorp
Twitter: @GrowGenOK
Instagram: Growgeneration_corp
SOURCE GrowGeneration
Related Links
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What if the salesman in the beginning of Aladdin is telling us a made up story To trick us into buying an ordinary lamp?
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After five years of frustration following the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, 2014 may well go down in history as the year when climate change made a comeback on the international agenda.
Although there is still one year to go until the key Paris meeting scheduled to deliver a new World Climate Agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, 2014 has seen several milestones on the path to a low-carbon future.
In September, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gave the issue top priority by holding his own special climate summit in New York. It was accompanied by marches in the US and other parts of the world, organized by a growing grassroots movement to combat climate change.
Meanwhile, the world's biggest emitters, China and the US, finally signaled their intention to commit to action on climate change.
No time for delay
Nor has the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC left any doubt about the need for urgent action, says Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Civil society is concerned about climate change
"We see that global temperatures have risen by almost one degree centigrade in the last 100 years. We see that global sea level has risen by nearly 20 centimeters (eight inches) in the last 100 years. We see that the mountain glaciers and the Arctic ice cover is in retreat, the continental ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking, losing mass, contributing to sea level rise."
Rahmstorf also cites the number of record-breaking hot months, which have increased five fold on what would happen by chance in a stationary climate.
Based on the scientific evidence available, the international community agrees that a temperature rise of two degrees is the maximum possible without exposing the world to potentially devastating climate change. That means limiting greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. With those emissions still on the rise, that goal is nowhere in sight, says Rahmstorf - and climate change is already having an impact at just under one degree of warming.
Paving the way for Paris
Experts see the world on track for a temperature rise of at least four degrees, unless emissions are reduced substantially in the very near future. That would take us out of the range we are familiar with throughout human history and into uncharted and very dangerous waters, says Rahmstorf. The latest figures indicate that to stay within the two-degree limit, not only would emissions have to peak within the next ten years, but the world would have to become virtually carbon-neutral in the second half of this century.
Heading for uncharted waters
That is why the Lima Climate Change Conference in December is important as part of an ongoing process, says UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. Negotiators assembling in Lima will have to make progress on drafting the universal climate agreement, which is scheduled to be agreed in Paris in December 2015 and to come into effect in 2020.
Regarding Paris, countries have until March 2015 to put their planned contributions on the table. The EU made a start by announcing its targets last month, while the US and China followed up with encouraging signals. Most countries are currently doing their homework and figuring out what they can contribute, Figueres says.
A price on CO2
Ottmar Edenhofer co-chairs the IPCC group concerned with tackling climate change and is also a chief economist at the Potsdam Climate Institute. He says the world has only around 20 to 30 years left to solve the emissions problem. He stresses it is not a question of technology.
Alternative energy technologies are there. Yet fossil fuels have been enjoying a renaissance, the expert says, and the key is to put a price on carbon, making it too expensive to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.
Since the world only has a limited carbon budget, that would mean allowing just a further thousand gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere to keep temperature rise below the two-degree threshold and avoid the risk of what Edenhofer describes as"very severe climate change impacts."
Low-lying island states like Kiribati are under threat
UN climate chief Figueres agrees that putting a price on CO2 pollutants is a very important component of the shift towards a low carbon economy.
"What we have done over the past 150 years is assumed there is no cost to the irresponsible use of the environment, and we have proceeded as though the environment were constantly renewable, where it is not," Figueres told DW.
Hammering out the details
Negotiators in Lima have their work cut out for them. Countries with large fossil fuel reserves are reluctant to agree to emissions reductions that would destroy their source of revenue. But Edenhofer is optimistic that all countries will realize that climate change will pay off in the end.
"We have to assume that people will see the sense in it. They will realize that the long-term consequences of business as usual will be irreversible climate change, with all the problems that brings."
The economist says protecting the climate would also bring the kind of short-term benefits politicians are looking for. He cites the change in China's policies as an example:
"The reason the Chinese government is thinking very seriously about reducing emissions is because it would also be a step towards improving their air quality."
Funding boost
After years of stagnation and frustration, there are signs that progress is being made. At a key meeting in Berlin this month, countries pledged a total of almost 10 billion dollars (eight billion euros) to the Green Climate Fund, which was set up to help poorer countries adapt to climate change. This could motivate developing countries and emerging economies to sign up to a new world climate agreement. So far, many of them have been reluctant to limit their own emissions, as the wealthy industrialized states are the ones who have caused the problem by emissions in the past.
German development and environment ministers welcomed new funding pledges in Berlin
Although both the money and the emissions cuts currently on the table are still insufficient, German scientist Rahmstorf compares the likelihood of a breakthrough to the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago.
"If you had asked people just a few months before that how likely it was that the wall would down, nobody would have said it's going to happen," says the Potsdam expert and IPCC author. He says these kinds of processes in society are hard to predict - and the signs are encouraging.
He cites the "huge success story" of renewable energies and the considerable emissions reductions by EU countries since 1990. This did not hamper economic growth, says Rahmstorf:
"It shows that you can decouple emissions from economic growth and welfare."
This year, for the first time, a pre-conference meeting was held in Peru to involve non-governmental groups in the climate process. The transition to a low-carbon society requires action across the board.
But it is the governments of the world who have to enter into binding agreements. That means plenty of hard work ahead for the negotiators in Peru over the next two weeks. | {
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While Democrats, sore losers and the butthurt corporate media continue to yell ‘THE RUSSIANS DID IT’ or something… a sane voice noted that it is far more likely that it was in fact people within the US intelligence community who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, which ultimately wound up affecting the election result, so the left would have America believe.
Appearing on Varney and Co., Judge Andrew Napolitano told Stewart Varney that he has a source inside the intelligence community who is adamant that insiders leaked the damning emails to Wikileaks, and the Vladimir Putin and Russia had nothing to do with it.
“There is NO EVIDENCE that this was done by the Russians.” Napolitano stated, adding “But there is evidence for this. Who was harmed by Mrs. Clinton’s extremely careless use of state secrets? Whose agents’ lives were jeopardized by her failure to keep these state secrets? The American intelligence community.”
“It is more likely than not that members of the American intelligence community leaked this to Julian Assange than that the Russians did… The suggestion comes from members of the intelligence community.” Napolitano noted.
Napolitano has made the same claims before, stating that members of the intelligence community simply did not want Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States.
As Infowars reported in November, days before the election, numerous trustworthy sources have claimed that the Podesta hack, which led to Wikileaks releasing tens of thousands of Clinton campaign emails, as well as other hacks targeting the Democratic Party, were the work of U.S. intelligence operatives attempting to save America from a Clinton presidency.
William Binney, NSA whistleblower and former technical head of the NSA, also told Infowars back in August that the email leaks were carried out by individuals within the US intelligence community who were angry at Hillary exposing classified information and sought to take revenge.
“The CIA and FBI examined the exact same data that was produced for them by the NSA.” Napolitano said.
“The CIA analysts said the Russians are behind this. The FBI analysts said there is no evidence that the Russians are behind this. We do know this was leaking. This was not hacking. Leaking is the unauthorized exposure of something to a person to whom it wasn’t intended. Hacking is the altering of an operational system… You can’t affect the outcome of the election if you hack Clinton and the DNC. You can affect the outcome of an election if you affect those who register the voters or count the voters.”
Napolitano’s analysis also dovetails with that of former British ambassador Craig Murray, who was told by security insiders that the email leak “comes from within official circles in Washington DC.”
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today! | {
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William Peranteau is the guy parents call when they’ve received the kind of bad news that sinks stomachs and wrenches hearts. Sometimes it’s a shadow on an ultrasound or a few base pairs out of place on a prenatal genetic test, revealing that an unborn child has a life-threatening developmental defect. Pediatric surgeons like Peranteau, who works at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, usually can’t try to fix these abnormalities until their patients leave their mother’s bodies behind. And by then it might be too late.
It’s with the memory of the families he couldn’t help in the back of his mind that Peranteau has joined a small group of scientists trying to bring the fast-moving field of gene editing to the womb. Such editing in humans is a long way off, but a spate of recent advances in mouse studies highlight its potential advantages over other methods of using Crispr to snip away diseases. Parents confronted with an in utero diagnosis are often faced with only two options: terminate the pregnancy or prepare to care for a child who may require multiple invasive surgeries over the course of their lifetime just to survive. Prenatal gene editing may offer a third potential path. “What we see as the future is a minimally invasive way of treating these abnormalities at their genetic origin instead,” says Peranteau.
LEARN MORE The WIRED Guide to Crispr
To prove out this vision, Peranteau and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania injected Crispr editing components, encoded in a virus, into the placentas of pregnant mice whose unborn pups were afflicted with a lethal lung-disease-causing mutation. When the fetuses breathed in the amniotic fluid they also inhaled the Crispr bits, which went to work editing the DNA inside their rapidly dividing alveolar progenitor cells. These cells give rise to many types of cells that line the lungs—including ones that secrete a sticky substance that keeps the lungs from collapsing every time you breathe. Mutations to proteins that make up this secretion are a major source of congenital respiratory conditions. All of the mice with the mutation died within a few hours of birth. Of those edited with Crispr, about a quarter survived. The results were published in today’s issue of Science Translational Medicine.
It’s the second proof of concept from the group of scientists in the past year. In October, they published a paper describing a slightly different procedure to edit mutations that lead to a lethal metabolic disorder. By changing a single base pair in the liver cells of prenatal mice, Peranteau’s team was able to rescue nearly all of the mouse pups. Other recent successes include unborn mice cured of a blood disorder called beta-thalassemia following a prenatal injection of Crispr, carried out last year by a team at Yale and Carnegie Mellon.
Though the field is still in its infancy, its pioneers believe that many of the problems Crispr-based therapies have to contend with—like reaching enough of the right cells and evading the human immune system—can be solved by treating patients while they are still in the womb.
“If you’re trying to edit cells in an adult organ, they’re not proliferating, so you have to reach a lot of them to have any impact,” says Edward Morrisey, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who coauthored the latest study. Fetuses, on the other hand, are still developing, which means their cells are in a state of rapid division as they grow into new tissues. The earlier in life you can edit, the more those genetic changes will multiply and propagate through developing organs. Morrisey’s mice might have only been born with the genetic edit in about 20 percent of their lung cells, but 13 weeks later, the correction had spread to the entire surface of the lung. “They’ve actually outcompeted the nonedited cells, because those cells are very sick,” says Morissey. | {
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Ya know what I like greatest about this sizzling nubile bi-atch? She goes gay-for-pay to the belt buckle to suck salami. And there’s no must pump this meat stick up as a result of it pops out laborious as rock. She offers excellent head earlier than he leisurely slide his dork deep into her very cosy snatch. He fucks that fuckbox in a few positions, my fave being the rear end as a result of she has an superior caboose, after which he offers her a thick goopy fountain of jizm cascading from her chin. | {
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By Keith Idec
Four days after Jose Ramirez’s last opponent couldn’t make weight, his handlers have secured another challenger who has repeatedly struggled to make the 140-pound limit.
According to a Yahoo! Sports report Tuesday night, Ramirez will defend his WBC super lightweight title against Antonio Orozco on September 14 in Fresno, California. ESPN will televise Ramirez-Orozco from Fresno State University’s SaveMart Center.
“I think [Ramirez-Orozco] is a terrific fight,” Top Rank president Todd duBoef told Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole. “Stylistically, it is a can’t miss.”
The 30-year-old Orozco, the WBC’s No. 3-ranked super lightweight contender, is undefeated and a more credible opponent than Danny O’Connor. But like O’Connor last week, Orozco has had serious trouble making weight for 140-pound bouts in the recent past.
Orozco (27-0, 17 KOs) was treated for severe dehydration the day he was supposed to weigh-in for a December 2016 fight against Fidel Maldonado Jr. in Indio, California. Their fight was canceled, which made Orozco consider a move up to the welterweight limit of 147 pounds.
He ultimately remained at super lightweight, but failed to make weight for one of his three 140-pound fights scheduled since the Maldonado match was canceled. Orozco reportedly was seven pounds overweight the day he was supposed to weigh in for a 140-pound fight against Roberto Ortiz last year in Inglewood, California.
Orozco didn’t make it to the California State Athletic Commission’s scale for that September 23 bout, either, and it also was canceled. Orozco made the 140-pound limit for his two bouts between those two canceled contests and won both of those fights convincingly.
He defeated KeAndre Gibson by fourth-round technical knockout in the first of those two bouts in April 2017. Orozco then beat Martin Honorio by unanimous decision in his last fight, March 16 in Los Angeles.
The 25-year-old Ramirez (22-0, 16 KOs), of Avenal, California, was supposed to fight the 13th-ranked O’Connor on Saturday night at SaveMart Center. O’Connor (30-3, 11 KOs), a southpaw from Framingham, Massachusetts, was so severely dehydrated by Friday that he was temporarily placed in the intensive care unit at an area hospital.
Promoter Bob Arum’s matchmakers understandably couldn’t find a replacement for O’Connor on such short notice. That forced Ramirez to watch a card that was built entirely around him from a ringside seat Saturday night.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing. | {
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It has been years since Microsoft upstaged an Apple Keynote (such things usually run in the opposite direction), but that is exactly what happened yesterday with the former’s $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn overshadowing Apple’s impressive yet iterative announcements at their annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). And yet, despite the contrast in expectations (zero versus high) and reactions (“What?!?” versus “Makes Sense”) there is a certain symmetry to the news: both are doubling down on their strategies, and it’s debatable which is taking the most risk by doing so.
Microsoft Buys LinkedIn
In its own small way perhaps the most surprising — and in many respects, encouraging — aspect of Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn was just how unexpected it was: a company with a notorious history of cutthroat boardroom politics not only pulled off the largest acquisition in its history without anyone knowing, it actually sat on the news regarding a signed letter of intent for a month! Granted, that meant limiting the information to an exceptionally small number of people, but there has been a lot of evidence over the past two years that Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella has, at least at the highest levels of management, been more focused and aligned on where Microsoft needs to go than at any point under former CEO Steve Ballmer.
It was Steve Ballmer who led Microsoft’s previous largest acquisition, that of Nokia in 2013, a deal that from day one made no sense (and that was opposed by Nadella). It is that deal, though, that is perhaps the best place to start from when it comes to understanding this one.
I marveled last month at how adroitly Nadella had killed the Windows Phone business (or to put it more accurately, allowed Windows to figure out on their own that the platform had been dead from the beginning). The wind down of that business, though, and the ongoing shift of Windows to effectively “maintenance mode”, opens up room in Microsoft’s R&D budget — about 13% of revenue — for something new, so why not LinkedIn? Leaving aside the purchase price, LinkedIn slides right into the Windows Phone void when it comes to Microsoft’s investment in the future, with the benefit of being a business that has actual upside.
I do believe that upside is magnified significantly by Microsoft: should LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, for example, sell in to 100% of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM user base, a good portion of this deal would be paid for; on the flipside, Dynamics now becomes a much more compelling offering in its ongoing competition with Salesforce (the most likely candidate for the rumored competitive bidder), Oracle, and SAP. And, of course, Microsoft’s Office products become that much more compelling with far deeper LinkedIn integration than was possible when they were two different companies (privacy concerns are much more easily solved when it’s the same company!).
I think, though, there is a deeper benefit that alters the trajectory of Microsoft’s productivity business in particular. I’ve written previously how Microsoft’s enterprise approach has been fundamentally upended by the cloud: when compatibility and ease-of-integration are no longer the controlling factors for IT buyers, Microsoft’s focus on lock-in and a good-enough user experience are simply not enough, and to the company’s credit both its Azure and Office 365 divisions have embraced a future that will be won on the user experience on all devices, not just Microsoft-controlled ones. Still, the question of who would own identity — previously the linchpin of Microsoft’s enterprise lock-in (thanks to Active Directory) — has been an open one.
What is potentially transformative about this deal is a future where Microsoft retains its focus on enterprise while shifting the locus of its business from companies to employees. I have written at length about the importance of owning the end user, but we the end users have multiple identities, one of which is our professional life, and that is a graph in which LinkedIn is nearly unchallenged. To put it another way, the “consumerization of IT” — a tagline favored by Ballmer — it not only about creating a compelling user experience in IT products but about treating enterprise users as, well, consumers: with LinkedIn Microsoft can form a direct relationship with its end users that goes far beyond the CIO and opens up a huge array of opportunities that not only were unavailable previously, but are also critical in a world where CIOs matter less than they ever have previously, and where employees change jobs constantly. Instead of starting from scratch with every new hire, it is Microsoft that is positioned to provide the glue that connects enterprise workers no matter where they are.
And, for what it’s worth, Microsoft got a deal: I think LinkedIn’s February stock slide was justified, but the fact remains that Microsoft is buying the social network for a price that would have been unthinkable six months ago, and the upside that justified the former stock price remains: LinkedIn knows more about its users than anyone outside of Facebook — and when it comes to our professional lives, they know more. This is the most valuable data in the world.
The most obvious criticism of this deal is the opportunity cost: what might that $26 billion have been spent on otherwise? Even with this deal Microsoft’s existential threat remains: why would a new company buy any of their products? This acquisition doesn’t solve that in a way a pairing of, say, Dropbox and Slack would (two tastes that would be better together, and who also aren’t selling), but then again, Microsoft has far more money than they do time: LinkedIn builds a bridge for their productivity business to a new world centered around end users, not corporations, and it may even give Microsoft’s inevitable compete products a head start. Imagine this: instead of simply moving Active Directory to the cloud, Microsoft is potentially making LinkedIn the central repository of identity for all business-based interactions: chat, email, and more, and it’s an identity that endures for an end user’s professional life, because it’s managed by the user, not by their transient employer. It’s genuinely exciting, and shocking though it may have been, I think that’s worth $26 billion.
More broadly, this has to be seen as the final blow to the notion that Windows is Microsoft’s focus; as late as 2014 I argued the company should split itself up, simply because the “Windows first” culture was so entrenched, but Nadella has done a remarkable job reorganizing and reorienting the company towards a future where Windows is one of many clients for Microsoft’s service offerings, and if it wasn’t clear to the rank-and-file yet, it surely must be now. Microsoft is doubling-down on the cloud and on productivity, and now there are 26 billion reasons to believe them.
Apple at WWDC
Apple’s WWDC announcements, meanwhile, were perhaps most notable for what they didn’t include, including no mention of iMessage on Android, and no significant discussion about Siri beyond the rumored and sorely needed incremental improvements (and even there, somewhat limited: Siri’s API is only open to a subset of applications).
Instead the keynote was about enhancing and deepening the value that comes from living the full Apple lifestyle: now your Watch unlocks your Mac, and your desktop is available on your iPhone. You can pay for things in your Mac’s browser using the iPhone, and control your house via the Apple TV from your lock screen. And yes, Messages got a massive update that I am very excited about (more tomorrow as I review the keynote in-depth), but its features are only available if you’re messaging other iPhone users: pay up or get left out.
Just as notable were the new things that weren’t announced: Apple is allowing users to delete pre-installed apps, and while there is no news about defining new default apps, should Apple do so the company would be on the path towards making its hardware mastery even more compelling by virtue of enabling services companies like Google and Microsoft to enhance the experience of using an iPhone.
This enhancement, of course, theoretically weakens Apple in the long run, as it squanders the ability of the company to leverage its hardware advantage into a services lock-in, but given my conviction on the power of culture I’m not sure this is a bad thing; here Steve Jobs’ advice rings true:
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
For Apple what is next should almost certainly be guided by what the company is the best at: integrating hardware and software to deliver a user experience so compelling that consumers continue to self-select into the company’s own orbit, not building infrastructure on top of platforms it doesn’t control.
That, though, is also what made me nervous about the company’s announcements. CEO Tim Cook emphasized at the beginning of the keynote, in his words, “why we do what we do at Apple.”
Our North Star has always been about improving people’s lives by creating great products that change the world.
Several of the product announcements, though, like enhancements to photos and Siri, seemed to care more about an absolutist view of privacy than about the best possible end user experience; make no mistake, I value privacy, but everything is a trade-off. At what point might Apple’s strenuous defense of privacy shift from a principled stand to a convenient reason to not be competitive with alternatives like Google photos or Alexa? Or, to put it another way, when does principle become an excuse for not being competitive on the user experience that has been Apple’s biggest differentiator for its entire existence?
Apple Versus Microsoft
Apple’s keynote was notable for its having doubled-down on what the company excels at: providing a better experience provided you pay Apple’s hardware margins. In this their announcement echoes Microsoft’s decision to double down on owning professional productivity and services. The difference, though, is in the timing: Microsoft is (finally) pivoting to the approach they should have adopted a decade ago, and while that has cost the company a lot of time and increased their risk, it is exciting to see them closer to the beginning than the end of their strategy. The question for Apple is where on that spectrum do they lie: for how long will a hardware-centric strategy drive growth, and just how much is Apple willing to change its culture to ensure it takes advantage of new opportunities and not simply preserve what it has?
Or maybe it doesn’t matter: odds are the biggest news from Monday will be Snapchat’s launch of an advertising API; the world goes on, value moves up the stack, and attention to the “story of the day” is all too often a trailing indicator.
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It's the time of the year for New Year's resolutions, and one of the most popular ones is to hit the gym.
But fitness start-ups like Mirror are giving consumers an alternative to sweating it out at the gym: Exercising at home. A report by Global Market Insights predicts that the global fitness equipment market will exceed $14 billion by 2024.
Mirror is looking to take a piece of that pie. The company is the brainchild of Brynn Putnam, a former professional ballerina and owner of a chain of boutique fitness studios. The Mirror system consists of an LCD panel, stereo speakers, camera, microphone and companion iOS app. The company works with trainers to create live and on-demand workouts for cardio, strength, yoga, pilates, barre, boxing and stretching. It's a business model similar to Peloton, the in-home spinning bike.
Mirror costs $1,495 with a monthly content subscription of $39. CNBC took it for a spin. | {
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“TO THE MOON” is the famous rallying battlecry of Bitcoin blockchain diehards. It is the phrase heard around the world whenever the price of Bitcoin skyrockets relative to fiat currencies. In the last few weeks the price of Bitcoin hit gold parity. And just recently, even with the SEC rejection of the much-anticipated Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF, the value of Bitcoin has quickly recovered to above $1,200 level. There was no “crash.” If anything, it is the Bitcoin community that rejected SEC and not the other way around. Looks like Bitcoin is on its way to the moon after a quick detour.
But all is not well with Bitcoin. There is trouble in the blockchain paradise. The biggest threat to Bitcoin had nothing to do with the SEC rejection. It’s a problem of scaling, and more crucially, a problem of governance. Whatever the outcome of that stalemate, only time will tell. In the meantime, I’d like to offer a more scientifically nuanced analogy to that famous blockchain battlecry.
In the real world of rocket science, going to the moon requires a multi-stage propulsion to achieve orbital velocity. A proven design is a three-stage rocket system. However, modern cost-effective designs (i.e. SpaceX Falcon 9 ) use a two-stage-to-orbit system. In my view, when it comes to cryptocurrency mass adoption, going “to the moon” is not achieved only with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the foundation. It’s the tide that lifts all cryptocurrencies. But it is by no means the best blockchain platform. There’s an internet of blockchains on the horizon. There can be as many moonshots as there are solutions to problems that can be solved with a blockchain.
That said, if the “moonshot” is mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, then my Cryptotrifecta is well-positioned to accomplish that goal. Using a two-stage-to-orbit system as analogy: Bitcoin is the first stage rocket, Ethereum is the second-stage, and Dash is the payload that will actually land on the moon. With the current stalemate in Bitcoin scaling debate, only Dash is in a position to become the killer payment system app that could achieve mass user adoption with the upcoming release of Dash Evolution. If and when that happens, Bitcoin would still be an excellent platform for settlement systems, while Ethereum is not vying to be a cryptocurrency at all, but would become the dominant blockchain for enterprise. In my own personal journey with blockchain technology, Bitcoin was my introduction to the wonderful world of blockchains, and my early adoption of Ethereum during its presale enabled me to acquire a Dash masternode.
So here’s to my Cryptotrifecta Moonshot! I’m looking forward to landing on the moon. See you on the dark side. | {
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A political cartoonist for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz has come under fire for likening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to one of the 9/11 hijackers. The artist said the cartoon was intended to show the Israeli PM's misguided US policy.
The image depicts Prime Minister Netanyahu in a plane labeled “Israel” barreling into a skyscraper flying a US flag on top. The cartoon is reminiscent of September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, when nearly 3,000 people died.
Critics have widely slammed Haaretz newspaper for publishing the cartoon.
With the ensuing backlash, the cartoonist, Amos Biderman, tweeted in Hebrew that the message behind the drawing is that “Bibi is arrogantly and wantonly destroying Israel’s ties with the US and is leading us to a disaster on the scale of 9/11,” Haaretz reports.
Speaking to the newspaper on Thursday, Biderman tried to explain that he was "mocking" the Israeli PM.
"He's been acting like a bull in a china shop with the United States, which is Israel's most important strategic asset," Biderman said.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has said that the newspaper needs to publically apologize and “retract this grossly offensive cartoon.”
“Not only does it completely misrepresent any tensions which may current exist between the US government and Mr. Netanyahu, it disrespects the memories of thousands of innocent Americans and others who tragically perished on 9/11, and the deep pain and trauma caused by the horrific attacks,” a statement by Abraham Foxman, National Director for the ADL, said.
Foxman said he was “shocked and outraged” that Haaretz allowed for the image to be published because the cartoon was particularly “jarring and incredibly irresponsible.”
“As anti-Semitic conspiracy theories charging that Israel and/or Jews were behind the attacks are still believed by large swaths of the Muslim world, it is particularly jarring and incredibility irresponsible that an Israeli newspaper, especially one whose journalistic standards are widely respected, would resort to publishing such a highly offensive stereotype in the name of political satire,” he said.
The cartoon was also roundly panned on social media, where it was called “garbage”, “pretty provocative” and “the most disgracefully” anti-Israel cartoon.
Israeli Foreign Ministry official Paul Hirschson remarked on Twitter that the cartoon was “gutter press.”
Haaretz Cartoon: Offensive to Israel, Offensive to the U.S. | HonestReporting - The above is how Haaretz... http://t.co/wg6rRRyrRB — Eretz Yisrael (@_EretzYisrael) October 31, 2014
Roman Gertsberg, whose 25 year-old daughter Marina died in the attack on the Twin Towers, told the Algemeiner Journal the whole premise of the cartoon was beyond ridiculous.
“Nobody in their right mind should associate Israel with flying a plane into the WTC . It it very offensive to 9/11 families to distort the historical events of that tragic day in order to bring attention to one political statement or another,” Gertsberg said.
“We know who the perpetrators were – Al Qaeda and all their supporters,” he added.
Biderman told Haaretz that he certainly did not want to “insult or upset anyone” and that he “wasn't sufficiently aware of the great sensitivity that 9/11 holds for Americans."
“I have used some of Israel's greatest tragedies as the background for my cartoon. In one of my recent cartoons, which poked fun at the so-called Milky protest, I even referenced the Gestapo. I never imagined that by using an image that evoked 9/11 I would cause such a storm,” Biderman said.
The cartoon follows highly charged comments by Obama administration officials, who were cited as calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and “coward.”
The officials accused the Isareli PM of being more interested in political posturing than de-escalation of tensions in the region.
Netanyahu, in a rare step, addressed the anonymous officials directly, saying that unlike him, the security and unity of Jerusalem were not their primary concerns.
He said that he was attacked only because of his decision to “defend the State of Israel” and its people.
"Despite all of the attacks I suffer, I will continue to defend our country. I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel," Netanyahu added. | {
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There hasn’t been an awful lot of excitement in this summer’s transfer window but there has been the odd story that has caught people’s attention. It appeared as though Romelu Lukaku was heading to Chelsea and Alvaro Morata to Manchester United, but the Belgian striker snubbed his former team to be re-united with Jose Mourinho, leaving the Spaniard with a move to Stamford Bridge.
In Lukaku, United have a proven goalscorer, who by the age of 24 has scored more than Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo had at the same age. In fact, having just begun his sixth season of starting in the Premier League, Lukaku already has more Premier League goals than Fernando Torres and Denis Bergkamp. By the end of the season, he will likely have overtaken Didier Drogba and Ruud van Nistelrooy too.
Despite missing his penalty in the Community Shield against Arsenal and a sitter against Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend, Morata will likely go on to have a good career at Chelsea. His goal and assists record doesn’t compare to Lukaku’s though.
While you would accept Chelsea fans hailing Morata as the better buy, it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense for the neutral to, yet some have argued that Antonio Conte has got the better deal. Fine, people are entitled to their own preference, but when the foundation behind their opinion is that Lukaku is “lacking intelligence”, questions should be asked.
European football journalist Mina Rzouki told BBC 5 Live: “I would pay £20m or £30m more if I had to and I would bring in Morata. That is because I would always prefer an intelligent player in my team. Even if he doesn’t score as many goals, even if he doesn’t do whatever he needs to.”
Following Lukaku’s fourth goal in three competitive games for United against Swansea at the weekend, Alan Pardew, in his role as pundit for Sky Sports, claimed the striker didn’t have the “cleverness“ that Ibrahimovic, Van Nistelrooy and Teddy Sherigham had.
Paul Merson previously claimed the striker made the right move in joining United instead of Chelsea, as he’s “not bright enough to play with Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas.” We’ll ignore the irony of Merson downplaying anyone else’s intelligence.
Lukaku has done very well then, considering he has no footballing brain, to have scored so many goals for clubs, before now, that have been scraping around in midtable positions. When you consider that only six of his goals have been from the penalty spot, it makes you wonder how on earth he worked out to be in the right place at the right time to score so many times.
Lukaku’s former manager at Everton, Roberto Martinez, spoke contrary to the lazy stereotype that has been banded around and gave insight in to what sort of a player he is.
“The first time I spoke with him I realised that he was not a typical centre forward, power whatever,” he said. “He is a thinker. He is a really knowledgeable man and is someone who looks at games in a very different way. He is like a manager in the way that he looks at movement. He speaks about games that he’s seen, different moves – not the normal conversation that you would have with an ordinary 20-year-old footballer, believe me.”
After Lukaku met up with his new teammates in the summer, Antonio Valencia lauded Lukaku for his obvious strength but also hailed his intelligence.
When at Everton, Lukaku was interviewed by Thierry Henry for Sky Sports, and discussed the thought process and effort that goes in to improving his performances.
“I have a lot of clips on my computer of different types of strikers and I spend hours, and hours, and hours watching it,” Lukaku said. “I try to learn what their strongest points are, pick out a little bit and work on it in training. I love watching football. I love studying other players.”
Henry puffed out his cheeks at one point in the interview, exclaiming, “it’s refreshing to see how bright you are.” Maybe Henry was surprised too. Maybe he had bought in to the myth.
It’s not just strikers who Lukaku studies though but opponents too. In 2015, he revealed that before every game he gets out his laptop and watches clips of the defenders he is about to face.
“When I watch a match I know what teams are going to do, I know what their patterns are because I watch the games and I know and I see the movements,” he explained.
He also revealed that from a young age he has been keen to self-analyse his performances and would know which areas of his game his youth coaches were going to pull him up for even before discussing it with him.
Another skill he developed was ‘taking pictures in his head’, to map out where he was in relation to the goal, his teammates and the opposition.
“When I am in a certain position on the pitch I always take a picture of the goal and how the defenders are positioned and that’s when I know what I am going to do,” he said.
These excerpts don’t sound like the words of someone lacking a football brain. That’s not to say he will always make the right decision. In the Super Cup final against Real Madrid, he chased after a ball he had to know he would be offside for, but then maybe that was more to do with instinct and desperation to get a goal. ‘Intelligence level: ZERO‘ was how it was described by plenty on Twitter. Still, Javier Hernandez spends his life going after balls from offside positions but pundits don’t claim he lacks intelligence.
So if they aren’t talking about his footballing intelligence, maybe they are just claiming he’s just not very smart. But for a man who speaks six languages, and whose mother wouldn’t let him leave for Chelsea when he was 14 but stay in Belgium until he had finished his education, it’s hard to know how claims of him being stupid can be substantiated.
Lukaku isn’t the first and is unlikely to be the last black player to have his intelligence unfairly questioned though.
“Until we are considered to be intellectually equal, we will never be equal,” John Barnes said in 2009. Yet when even the managers, the people picking the teams, are guilty of racism, what chance do the players have of combatting the false stereotypes. The fact we have so few black managers, a topic that some journalists have shined a light on, doesn’t help matters, and is another product of racist attitudes in the sport.
Bayern Munich assistant Willy Sagnol, when manager of Bordeux, claimed he wouldn’t be signing many African players, as, despite being “ready to fight” they didn’t have the required “technique” and “intelligence”.
The more famous example probably comes from Ron Atkinson, retired from management when making the comments, who referred to Marcel Desailly as “what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy, thick n*gger”.
Ah yes, of course. Laziness. The other characteristic too often falsely attributed to black footballers.
In 2014, Yaya Toure’s agent, Dimitri Seluk, claimed his client would have won player of the year award if he were white. “He does not get the praise he should,” the agent added.
When manager of Manchester City, Manuel Pellegrini took to press conferences to defend Toure against the label of being “lazy”, after being questioned by a journalist, he was quick to provide facts to dispel the myths.
“If you review the numbers of Yaya, each game he runs as much as every teammate,” he argued, although his words likely fell on deaf ears.
Even when 32 and approaching the twilight of his career, the distance Toure covered on the pitch per game was up there among some of the most hard-working players at the club, ranking directly behind David Silva but above Fernandinho.
Toure will be labelled lazy about as often as he’s described as “powerful”and “strong” though, just like every up-and-coming black midfielder is likened to a “young Patrick Vieira”, regardless of whether their attributes are anything alike. The Match of the Day analysis of Paul Pogba’s brilliant display against Swansea on Saturday showed how even when black players are being praised, their real talents are overlooked and they are categorised in stereotypical ways.
Pogba’s technical ability is out of this world. The tight situations he manages to manoeuvre out of while keeping the ball at his feet is remarkable to watch. With a dip of the shoulder he can send an opponent the wrong way, before his skilful feet quickly move the ball. His finish on Saturday, a lovely dink over the goalkeeper, was exquisite. Yet you will rarely find any delicate adjectives used to describe Pogba on the pitch.
“What he brings you is this powerful presence in the opposition box,” Danny Murphy said. “What he’s best at is using his athleticism, his power… he’s nice and fit, and strong.”
Yes, Pogba is all of those things, but that is not what stood out about his performance on Saturday. It’s hard to imagine that if any white player was to perform in the same way that Murphy would be cooing over their physical prowess instead of their technical ability.
It’s 2017 and we’re still putting black footballers in to boxes. They are thick, lazy and physically strong. If we say it often enough, it becomes true. And if Lukaku outscores Morata this season, it will be his power that did it, while the white player can still be hailed for his intelligence, despite his inferior goal tally.
Surely we’re better than this.
------------ Made in Manchester is available for just £5. It includes 30 articles from the country's best football writers about graduates from the Manchester United academy.. All profit goes to Trafford Macmillan so please support this fantastic cause. | {
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EU countries are reverting to a familiar mantra in times of crisis: Buy local!
Some countries have betrayed a shaky sense of European solidarity in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, and a half-hearted commitment to the internal market. Borders have shut, countries have been reluctant to export medical equipment and northern countries have shot down the idea of a pan-European debt instrument dubbed "corona bonds."
This week, France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stoked further suspicions that charity really begins at home in the EU by calling on retailers to be "economically patriotic" and favor products from French farmers.
"I call on major distributors to make a new effort: Stock up on French products," he said on France Info radio.
Le Maire's call came after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on Monday evening that open-air food markets would be closed. Almost simultaneously, Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume encouraged citizens "to make a gesture of alimentary patriotism" and "buy French" in an interview with BFM TV.
Supermarket chain Carrefour said it would stop selling fruit and vegetables of foreign origin when there is a French alternative.
In Italy, Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio appealed to the population of the worst-hit country to "Buy Italian."
"The first economic measure that all Italians can get involved in at this moment is to buy Italian ... and help our businesses," Di Maio said in an interview with public TV broadcaster RAI, while making clear that his appeal was only addressed to citizens who can afford it.
A similar call also came from Portugal, where the economy minister asked the population to buy domestic products, as reported by the Lisbon newspaper Público.
Politically, the doctrine of encouraging consumers to buy locally has played well in the nationalist camp. In Italy, Di Maio's words echoed those from the leaders of far-right opposition parties Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, who both asked Italians to buy "Made in Italy" wares.
Similarly in France, where the leader of the far-right National Rally party Marine Le Pen welcomed Le Maire's move in as "essential and urgent."
Gripes against gastronationalists
French gastronationalism is, however, a very long-running bugbear in neighboring countries. Belgium consistently points out, for example, that its farmers have far shorter supply chains with supermarkets in northern France than suppliers from southern France. Even back in 2017, Belgium complained that French labeling of products as French-made slashed its milk exports to its western neighbor.
Speaking with POLITICO, Belgian Finance Minister Alexander De Croo was quick to warn of intra-European moves towards economic nationalism.
“We have to be careful about a scenario where some countries will conduct a nationalist economic policy,” De Croo said, adding that "this is not the time for aggressive economic nationalism."
Taking the same line, a person involved in the retail industry said: “It’s not the right time to start choosing national products over other products. The last thing we need to do now is to undermine the single market.”
French retailers promptly responded to the call, however.
Supermarket chain Carrefour said it would stop selling fruit and vegetables of foreign origin when there is a French alternative solution. In addition, starting this week, Carrefour "will switch to 100 percent French products such as strawberries and asparagus," the company said in a statement, adding that this critical time "calls for an effort on everyone's part."
There is an irony in big western EU retailers falling in step with political calls for short-supply chains. Over recent years, it has been big western retailers with operations in eastern Europe that have opposed governments in the east for adopting rules forcing supermarkets to use short-supply chains.
According to the Chief Economist of the European Policy Centre Fabian Zuleeg, exhortations to buy local are a normal response in times of crisis and the unity of the internal market is not yet at risk.
"People want to uphold the economic activity close to them, but the reality within the European Union is that we have an interdependent and integrated single market," the economist told POLITICO, adding that calls to buy local will not change this reality.
But, according to Zuleeg, things might become problematic if the preference for domestic products persists after the crisis.
"The worrying thing would be if that continues in the long run but, in this immediate crisis, while countries are in lockdown, this is a very natural reaction," he concluded.
Still, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday gave a sharp message that she has been unimpressed by EU countries' single-market solidarity at the outset of the crisis.
"When Europe really needed an all-for-one-spirit, too many initially gave an only-for-me response,” she said. “When Europe really needed to prove that this is not only a fair weather union, too many refused to share their umbrella.”
Ivo Oliveira and Thibault Larger contributed reporting.
This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Agriculture and Food. From food safety to animal disease, pesticides and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the agriculture policy agenda. Email [email protected] for a complimentary trial. | {
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A shameful falsehood resides at the heart of the gun de-control bill that Governor Scott Walker signed on Wednesday even as the nation still reeled from the reality of the nine innocents shot to death in a Charleston church.
The bill to which Walker affixed his unhesitating signature ended the long established 48-hour waiting period before acquiring a handgun in Wisconsin.
“If we had pulled back on this, I think it would have given people the erroneous opinion that what we signed into law today had anything to do with what happened in Charleston,” Walker said at the ceremonial singing of that measure along with one allowing off-duty and retired cops to carry concealed weapons in public schools.
What the official ending of the 48-hour “cooling off” rule did have something to do with was a decades-old fiction concerning another gun horror, this the 1991 killings of a Wisconsin woman named Bonnie Elmasri and her two children.
In the aftermath of that triple homicide, pro-gun advocate James Fendry offered a remarkable tale. Fendry—who reportedly founded his Wisconsin Pro-Gun Movement in 1981 at the urging of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action—announced that a woman named Bonnie had called him a day or two before the tragedy, saying she was desperate to get a gun to protect herself from her estranged and abusive husband.
Fendry reported he had explained to the woman that Wisconsin had a waiting period. He said he assumed this was the same Bonnie who was shot to death along with her two children by her husband less than the mandatory 48 hours later.
The local police were forthrightly dubious that Bonnie Elmasri had ever contacted Fendry or sought to obtain a gun.
Her brother was initially silent but felt compelled to denounce the tale as a fabrication after the NRA relayed it to participants in the debate in the House of Representatives on the Brady Bill in May of that year.
“My sister would never buy a weapon,” the brother, Gary Greenberg, told the Milwaukee Journal at the time. “Never. She would not know what to do with a gun if she had one in her hand. She did not go to a gun shop. I was very close to her and so were my parents, and we can account for almost every minute of the 48 hours.”
Of Fendry, the brother said, “I believe he is either making it up entirely or that somebody named Bonnie called him but that was not my sister.”
The brother’s words came immediately after Representative Barbara Vucanovich (R-NV) and Rep. Richard Schulze (R-PA) had dutifully repeated the NRA-supplied yarn to challenge the seven-day waiting period originally proposed by the legislation.
Vucanovich rose on the House floor and appealed to her colleagues, “Let’s take a look at what the Brady Bill means to women, more often than not the victims of violent crimes.”
She continued: “Look at the case of Bonnie Elmasri, of Wisconsin, whose husband repeatedly threatened to kill her. She secured a restraining order. But because of the severity of her husband’s threats, Bonnie didn’t feel this was enough. She tried to purchase a firearm for self-defense, but was told there was a two-day waiting period. The next day, Bonnie and her two sons, aged 17 and 3, were murdered by her husband.”
The congresswoman concluded, “In just this one instance, a two-day waiting period cost three innocent citizens their lives, two of them children. Who knows how many more lives a full seven-day waiting period would cost?”
When his turn came, Schulze rose and said, “There are many reasons for my opposition to the Brady Bill. But one of the most compelling reasons is the saving of innocent lives.”
He went on, “The proponents of the Brady Bill continue to argue that waiting periods such as the Brady Bill will save lives. But waiting periods can cost lives as well, as witnessed by the tragic death this past March 5 of Bonnie Elmasri of Wauwatosa, WI.”
He added, “Bonnie sought to buy a handgun to protect herself from her estranged husband. She applied to purchase a handgun but had to wait 48 hours before picking it up.”
He concluded, “Unfortunately, Bonnie was never able to pick up her handgun, because she was murdered the very next day by an abusive husband who the police were well aware of.”
Upon being informed of the brother’s reaction, Vucanovich and Schulze offered no apology. Vucanovich excused herself by saying simply that she got the story from the NRA.
The Brady Bill passed, but without a waiting period beyond an instant background check.
Wisconsin’s 48-hour requirement was still in effect in late February of this year, when state Senator Van Wanggaard introduced a bill to nix it. Wanggaard had championed the state’s concealed-carry bill and “Stand Your Ground” law before being bounced from office in the 2012 recall election.
Wanggaard successfully ran for his old seat last fall, having been given an A rating by the NRA for his “proven record of standing up for Second Amendment rights.” Wanggaard also received a rousing endorsement from none other than Fendry.
“A tireless leader protecting and advancing the rights of hunters and other law-abiding gun owners,” Fendry said of the state senator.
In his second month back in office, Wanggaard became the latest person to contend that the 48-hour provision prevented the innocent from defending themselves. He cited a familiar tale.
“We had that happen back in the early ’90s—one case that I’m familiar with, a gal that was physically beaten by her husband,” Wanggaard said. “She had a restraining order. She went to get a handgun. She had 48 hours’ waiting period to get that handgun for self-protection. And in that 48 hours, she and her two kids were killed by her husband.”
He then declared, “So what about the victims’ rights here?”
Upon learning of the renewed effort to use this twisted tale in violation of the victims’ right to the truth, Bonnie Elmasri’s brother had much the same reaction he had when it was used back in 1991.
“That is a made-up story,” Greenberg told The Daily Beast. “That is a total fabrication.”
He added, “I am 99.9999 percent sure that they just made that up.”
Greenberg allowed that his sister had indeed grown afraid of her husband, Mohsen Elmasri, after he turned abusive, slapping her and slamming her head against the stairs. But the brother does not believe that she would have even thought of obtaining a gun or that she would have known of Fendry or how to contact him, much less seek his help in arming herself.
“She never had any experience of guns,” Greenberg said. “She never held a gun. We are not gun people.”
Greenberg reported that his sister had not been too terrified of her husband to admit him into her home that day. A man who had never been known to possess anything more deadly than a BB gun then produced a pistol. He took her and their 17-year-old son, Michael, into the basement.
After shooting the two, the husband had headed upstairs. He shot the 3-year-old, Adam, as the child slept. The husband had finally turned the gun on himself.
At the funeral for the mother and her two sons, Rabbi Bernard Reichman described the tragedy in terms that also apply to the church murders in Charleston and so many other gun killings.
“It is as if the sun has gone out in the middle of the day,” he said.
Fendry and the NRA and its minions have never sought to further their cause by pointing out that the 48-hour waiting period had not kept the husband from obtaining a handgun. That also would have raised the question of how a man with known mental health and domestic violence issues came to arm himself legally.
When the brother now Googles the name “Bonnie Elmasri,” he sees that pro-gun folks have accepted the manifestly false version of the tragedy as gospel truth, calling his sister “the first Brady victim” and making such declarations as “Gun Control Kills.”
“She’s become like the poster child for this, which is insane,” Greenberg said on Thursday.
Fendry did not respond to a message left at his home. The brother continues to say he believes that even if a woman named Bonnie did call Fendry, it could not possibly have been Bonnie Elmasri and the resulting tale embraced by the pro-gun world is a fiction.
When Wanggaard’s office was informed that Bonnie Elmasri’s brother had emphatically denounced the account as false, a spokesman said the senator had gotten it “from the Congressional Record”—which in this instance is to say from the NRA and Fendry. The senator had not bothered to verify its authenticity.
“That’s why he didn’t use any names,” the spokesman said, seeming to suggest implicitly that his boss had not been completely convinced the tale was true in every regard.
The bill passed and landed before Walker, who had survived the 2012 recall and was even planning a presidential bid. He may very well not be aware of the falsehood at the heart of the measure. The fact remains that he signed into law a gun de-control measure with that shameful falsehood at its core.
Walker did it even as the families down in Charleston were preparing to bury their dead, even as most of us were despairing over the never ending gun violence.
He tops Wanggaard with his own rating by the NRA:
A+. | {
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A warm congratulations to Senator Joe Biden on his VP candidate position on the Democratic ticket!
Sen. Biden called me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq in April 2004, when there was heavy fighting between the Mahdi Army and the US military. He did so on the basis of a journal article I had written on the Sadr Movement in the Middle East Journal, which he had read. That knocked my socks off. People in Washington don’t often read journal articles. It struck me as the sort of thing that should happen in our democracy every day– you write something in your specialty, and your elected representative calls you to talk about it. No lobbies, think tanks, etc. involved.
So it was a positive impression! And in the hearing he was informed and articulate.
I want to say something about the tag line in the mainstream press about Sen. Biden’s alleged tendency to commit gaffes.
We have had a president for nearly 8 years who has committed almost nothing but gaffes, every day, all day. The corporate media typically forgive Bush for this and don’t even often bring it up. Why is it that it is an issue for Biden but not for Bush? Could it be that corporate media is owned by . . . Republicans?
When Biden ascends to these heights of malaproprism, then we can talk about it: | {
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The Geminid meteor shower – always a highlight of the meteor year – will peak from mid-evening December 13 until dawn December 14, with absolutely no moonlight to ruin the show.
On a dark night, you can often catch 50 or more meteors per hour. The greatest number of meteors fall in the wee hours after midnight, centered around 2 am local time (the time on your clock no matter where you are on Earth), when the radiant point is highest in the sky.
Be sure to give yourself at least an hour of observing time. It takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark.
Source: EarthSky | {
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Less than a month after Dave Grohl fell off a stage in Sweden and shattered his leg, Foo Fighters were back in action. The band celebrated the 20th anniversary of its debut album with a massive concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC featuring performances from Heart, Joan Jett, Gary Clark Jr., Buddy Guy, and others.
The biggest highlight, of course, was Foo Fighters’ headlining set. With his leg still in a cast, Grohl sang and played guitar from a giant light-up throne in the style of the Iron Throne from Games of Thrones (in lieu of swords, the throne was adorned with guitars).
Another notable moment came when Grohl brought his mother Virginia to the stage prior to performing “For All the Cows”. Grohl grew up near the Washington, DC area in Northern Virginia where his mother was a high school English teacher.
Watch fan-shot performance footage and see the full 24-song setlist below.
“Everlong”:
“Monkey Wrench”:
“Big Me” and story of Dave Grohl’s throne:
“For All the Cows” and Dave Grohl’s mom:
Setlist:
Everlong
Monkey Wrench
Learn to Fly
Something From Nothing
The Pretender
Big Me
Congregation
Walk
I’m the One (Van Halen cover)
Another One Bites the Dust (Queen cover)
Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes cover)
Cold Day in the Sun
My Hero (Acoustic)
Times Like These (Acoustic)
Under Pressure (Queen & David Bowie cover)
All My Life
These Days
Outside
Breakout
For All the Cows
Alone + Easy Target
This Is a Call
Generator
Best of You | {
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A Cryptome DVD is offered by Cryptome. Donate $25 for a DVD of the Cryptome 10+-years archives of 39,000 files from June 1996 to December 2006 (~4.1 GB). Click Paypal or mail check/MO made out to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. Archives include all files of cryptome.org, cryptome2.org, jya.com, cartome.org, eyeball-series.org and iraq-kill-maim.org. Cryptome offers with the Cryptome DVD an INSCOM DVD of about 18,000 pages of counter-intelligence dossiers declassified by the US Army Information and Security Command, dating from 1945 to 1985. No additional contribution required -- $25 for both. The DVDs will be sent anywhere worldwide without extra cost.
14 May 2007. A. comments: This story appeared early today on the Daily Mail website. It has since been pulled without explanation. If correct, this story could bring down the entire British government which is probably why it was immediately subject to a D notice - a British government order to censor a story. Look out for a big story on this tomorrow.
Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars...how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights
GLEN OWEN
UK Daily Mail
Sunday May 13, 2007
BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.
The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.
Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive last month after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an "anything goes" regime of sexual licence, spying and financial sweeteners.
High life: Mr Abrahams, left, and another BP executive not linked to any impropriety with local girls in Azerbaijan.
He also claims that Home Secretary John Reid was arrested at gunpoint on a BP-funded foreign trip for being out on the streets after a military curfew had been imposed.
Mr Abrahams tells how he spent £45 million in expenses over just four months of negotiations with Azerbaijan's state oil company.
Armed with a no-limit company credit card, he ordered supplies of champagne and caviar to be flown on company jets into the boomtown capital, Baku, to be consumed at the "sex parties".
Ex-BP boss Lord Browne
The hospitality continued in London, where prostitutes were hired on the BP credit card to entertain visiting Azerbaijanis.
Mr Abrahams, an engineer by training, joined BP in 1991, just as the disintegration of the Soviet Union had triggered a "new gold rush" by oil multi-nationals seeking a share of the 200 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea.
While employed by BP, Mr Abrahams says he was persuaded to work for MI6 by John Scarlett, now head of the service but then its head of station in Moscow.
He says he was passing information to Scarlett in faxes and at one-to-one meetings in the Russian capital.
He also claims that BP was working closely with MI6 at the highest levels to help it to win business in the region and influence the political complexion of governments.
Mr Abrahams worked for BP's XFI unit - Exploring Frontiers International - which specialises in opening new markets in often unstable parts of the world.
He said Lord Browne, then BP's head of exploration, allocated a budget of £45 million to cover the first year's costs of the Baku operation.
"The order came from Browne's aides to 'get them anything they want'.
"By 'them', they meant local officials in Azerbaijan," Mr Abrahams said.
"There were 20 or 30 people working on it at BP head office, and we soon had a steady stream of executives coming over as negotiators. We got through the money in just four months - after which it was simply increased without question."
He described a Wild West world in which oil executives with briefcases full of dollars rubbed shoulders with mafia members, prostitutes and fixers and cut their deals in smoke-filled back rooms.
"The BP officials would come out to Baku in groups of five or six, every week," he said.
"Sometimes I would charter an entire Boeing 757 to carry as few as seven staff. Their main base was the hard currency bar of the old Intourist hotel - so named because it accepted only dollars and was only open to foreigners.
"It was full of prostitutes and many of us, including me, used them on a regular basis, although we quickly established they all worked for the KGB.
"If we went back to the rooms, not only were they bugged, but the girls would quiz us closely about what we were doing and where we were going, and reported straight back to their handlers.
"Everywhere was bugged, and all the phones were tapped. One of our executives was recorded saying unflattering things about the president, and his comments were played back to us in a meeting with local state oil company officials.
"We were then told clearly that he was no longer welcome in the country."
Mr Abrahams helped to forge links with the local officials by throwing lavish parties. He said the Azerbaijani girls who worked in the BP office, which occupied a floor of the Sovietskaya hotel, would attend the parties and routinely provide "sexual favours".
They were also presumed to work for the local intelligence services.
"There was one girl, called Natasha, assigned to teach us Russian, but it usually ended up as more that that. She would use the intimate opportunity to ask us questions about what we were up to.
"Caviar and champagne were consumed at the parties, which would start in the bars but inevitably end with the girls in the rooms.
"We had a company American Express card with no name on it which we could use to draw out $10,000 a time to pay for entertaining without ever having to account for it.
"Our local fixer was called 'Zulfie', who would help find girls, drink and occasionally hashish. We always suspected he worked for the KGB, because he was so well connected.
"A lot of the BP men's marriages went wrong. Either they ended up with the local girls, or the wives would find out - often because the girls would ring their home numbers "by accident".
"I don't believe that Browne didn't know everything that was going on. He came out to Baku on five or six occasions."
Mr Abrahams, who left BP in 1994, said his first marriage buckled because of his work in Baku. He has since remarried and lives in West London with his new wife Lana and six-year-old daughter Anastasia. He now works as an adviser to the EU.
He said BP applied the same laissez-faire attitude to hospitality when Azerbaijani officials came to the UK during the negotiations.
"I was given a hotline number which connected to a desk in the Foreign Office. It meant visas could be granted instantly for the Azerbaijanis and collected on arrival at the airport, rather than taking the usual several weeks.
"We had bundles of cash to spend on them when they got here, and could again use the corporate card without restraint.
"We would typically have a dinner at which Lord Browne would be present, then he would go home and we would head off to somewhere like the Gaslight Club in Piccadilly - where girls would dance topless and you would get charged £250 for your drink.
"Our guests would usually want girls to go back with afterwards. Sometimes we could persuade the girls in the clubs, but more often we would just phone up an escort agency.
"We could charge them straight to the BP Amex card. But it sometimes became problematic. One group of Khazak Oil officials stripped their hotel rooms in Aberdeen bare, including the sheets and pillowcases, and they would usually clear out the minibars wherever they were staying."
All the entertaining paid off in September 1992 when BP signed a £300 million deal to exploit the Shah Deniz oilfields.
Mr Abrahams says that a key factor in securing the deal was an £8 million payment BP made that year to SOCAR, the state-owned oil company in Azerbaijan, for the right to use a construction yard on the edge of the Caspian Sea.
"It was effectively a sweetener to help to secure the deal - and it worked," he said.
Among the guests at a dinner and ceremony at Baku's Gulistan Palace to celebrate the Shah Deniz deal were Lord Browne and Baroness Thatcher.
Mr Abrahams says he was told to ensure that everything ran smoothly for the event, including meeting Browne's fastidious requirements.
"I had his favourite brand of water, Hildon, and his preferred foods flown out in advance, and I made sure money was paid for police escorts and to circumvent immigration procedures at the airport for Browne and his entourage.
"That evening, he personally handed me a briefcase containing a cheque for $30 million (£15million), to close the deal.
"He was so keen to wear a particular shirt, which he had left at the airport, that I persuaded the chief of police to close off the roads so his cavalcade could go via the airport to collect it."
In 1993, Mr Abrahams played host to a group of MPs who visited Baku as guests of BP, including Harold Elletson - then a Tory MP but now an adviser to the Liberal Democrats - and Home Secretary John Reid, a Shadow Defence Minister at the time.
"John flew out in the BP Gulfstream jet," he recalls.
"After dinner, we went drinking in the hard currency bar. He was drinking a lot - this was a year before he gave up for good - and I grew worried as it got closer to the time of the curfew imposed because of the tense political situation at the time.
"I said, 'Come on John, we have to get back to the hotel.' But as we left, he was swaying around and being very noisy.
"I urged him not to draw attention to us because we weren't meant to be still on the streets. But then a van load of police armed with Kalashnikovs pulled up and asked us what we were doing.
"He said, 'I am a British politician...' I urged him to be quiet, but then he said to one of the policemen, 'If you don't take that f***ing Kalashnikov out of my face I'm going to stick it up your f***ing a***.'
"With that, we were arrested and shoved at gunpoint into the back of the van.
"It was only after I persuaded the driver to go to the hotel to speak to the intelligence officer there that they released us. John had only about two hours' sleep, then was up at 5.30am to fly to the nearby war zone of Nagorno Karabakh. He was completely hung over."
Some of Mr Abrahams' most intriguing claims surround the alleged co-operation between BP and the British intelligence services to secure a more pro-Western, pro-business regime in the country.
He says the operation, masterminded by Scarlett in Moscow, contributed to the coup in May 1992 which saw President Ayaz Mutalibov toppled by Abulfaz Elchibey, and then to a second change a year later which saw Haydar Aliyev take power.
Just months after Aliyev was installed, BP signed the so-called 'contract of the century', a £5 billion deal which placed BP at the head of an oil exporting consortium.
John Scarlett, says Mr Abrahams, "approached me very subtly and asked me to help to gather information for him.
"Because my daily route to the construction yard passed the supply routes for Nagorno Karabakh, he asked me to report on troop and weapons movements. And BP's deputy representative in Russia seemed very close to the embassy, too.
"BP supported both coups, both through discreet moves and open political support. Our progress on the oil contracts improved considerably after the coups."
Subsequently released Turkish secret service documents claimed BP had discussed an 'arms for oil' deal with the assistance of MI6, under which the company would use intermediaries to supply weapons to Aliyev's supporters in return for the contract.
When the documents emerged in 2000, BP denied supplying arms - although sources admitted its representatives had "discussed the possibility".
A BP spokesman said last night of Mr Abrahams' claims: "There are some facts in his account that are accurate, but we don't recognise most of it. We regard it as fantasy."
A spokeswoman for John Reid said she had no comment and the Foreign Office said of Mr Abrahams' claims: "We neither confirm nor deny anyone's allegations in relation to intelligence matters." | {
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I was super sad that my initial match apparently just bailed after retrieving me as their giftee. I was left wondering, "What's wrong with me? Why wasn't I cool enough for them to want to gift me?"
And then I got my rematch. He emailed me apologizing for circumstances beyond his control leading to his rematch gift having to be late. I was just thrilled that I'd gotten a rematch, tbh. When the gift shipped, he sent me another email, apologizing that it wasn't anything big or grand, that he'd really wanted to come through and be awesome. To that I say: you ARE awesome sir!
Big, gnarly, non-feminine feet run in my family. Not cool when you're a girl. I got called "Flinstone Feet" as a kid. Luckily, my mom was a geek, and started reading The Hobbit and LOTR to me and my baby sis as our bedtime story. I came to embrace my Hobbit Feet. They are less Hobbity, what with the regular pedicures I treat myself to, and not running around barefoot like the child of a hippie sun child, like I was growing up, but when I opened the package, I laughed and hugged them and put them on and sent pictures to my mom and baby sis!
They are JEALOUS.
Also, my cats love to snuggle and/or attack them, and my real feet suffer less, now that they are surrounded by faux Hobbitness.
Thank you rematcher! I love them so much! I'm sorry your rematcher was far less awesome than you! | {
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But why are TestNets truly so important for blockchain development?
Preventative Measures
Although humans are prone to making mistakes, TestNets help minimize the propensity to create bugs. Thus, they are essential in ensuring the integrity and security of production systems. As previously stated, blockchains can easily be reduced down to software running on a computer. And just like all software in production, it needs to be adequately tested for bugs.
Staying on the Right Path in the Early Days
TestNets prove to be adequate frameworks for test-driven development in the blockchain space. In the same way that mission-critical software in industries such as transportation and healthcare must pass a rigorous testing platform, blockchain software must be adequately tested so that components function properly. While conventional testing frameworks can perform unit tests on individual components of blockchain source code, TestNets provide a high level interface for integration testing and, ultimately, studying the behavior of the chain as the codebase grows and changes.
Safety First
TestNets let developers debug their wallet applications (like Copay or Jaxx) without having to move and store actual coins. This increases the safety of production wallet applications by providing a fully functional sandbox network to interface with their apps, which minimizes the risk factor of dealing with coins with actual value and establishes trust among users and developers within the community.
Ultimately, TestNets are simply avenues for sufficient testing and debugging of blockchain code. Like the name implies, they’re networks in which you can simulate nearly anything that would happen in a production blockchain environment. And, they can be run on your own machine right now: you can spin up a Bitcoin TestNet here and an Ethereum TestNet here.
Thank you very much for reading!
Twitter, Github, Snapchat, Instagram | {
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That injury history spells out the inherent risk in signing Romo. He will turn 37 years old in April and there is no guarantee he will last even half a season. The Texans could be more attractive to Romo because they have a better offensive line than Denver, and it's possible Romo would not have to uproot his family in Dallas. The Broncos, meanwhile, have a championship defense and pedigree. Signing Romo despite his risk makes particular sense for Denver because the team doesn't necessarily need Romo. They have two promising young quarterbacks in Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch and could survive if Romo was hurt once again. The Texans have a more pressing need at quarterback but less cap space and are already forking over $16 million guaranteed to Osweiler in 2017. | {
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Titties! Have you seen so many fun titties in a cartoon show before? I mean, one that isn't porn... Would you believe me if I told you that these titties are actually really important? Do you think you know why? I mean, besides the fact that they're fun and hilarious! :P Scroll down for a huge collection of titties followed by an important message!
The first pair of titties I spotted was actually in the ad. Before I even watched the show titties are showing up!
That is one busty flamingo...
The titties are already bouncing for joy in the intro!
I don't know who thought of the idea of buildings having titties ... but I like them!
Bounce... Bounce... Bounce...
You probably missed a lot of little titties...
It's okay if you missed the little bird titties, that's what blogs like these are for :P
Some titties were more obvious.
Self confidence is encouraged! You go Tuca! Don't listen to that mirror! Be comfortable topless in your own apartment!
I mean, really obvious!
I'm still confused to why she took her shirt off while she had friends over? But she is in her own apartment so, why not?
This awkward moment...
Okay maybe sometimes the titties can come out too fast... he did say they were nice though. What a gentleman.
We can't forget about 'The Tittie Literature'
This is a must read! Write this title down, and put it on your wish list.
And We really can't forget Tuca's book
I wonder if it has an ISBN?
Oh look, more building titties!
Thought they could hide these ones, did they? :P
Of course, I can't forget to mention the time a boob just simply ran away, leaving a giant hole for another boob to try and fill...
At least they are best friends, it would be a lot more awkward otherwise.
And well... you know this one.
I find it funny that Tuca squeezed her, that's her best friend's tittie right there!
This gorgeous work of art!
This is actually pretty classy, I'm impressed by her Aunt's taste in art.
Did you notice the art at The Bakery?
This would make me buy baked goods at a bakery!
Tittie Humour!
Nothing wrong with trying to make your boobs even more fun!
and all the Titties in Tuca's imagination!
I can't really explain this, Tuca's mind must just ran wild...
Plus all the the background little titties!
So Many Titties!
So, why are these titties so important?
I'm glad you asked! All these titties in one (non-porn) show is a huge step for feminism and gender equality. Women are allowed to feel comfortable enough with their bodies to make joke about their titties.
No more titty stigma please!
#FreeTheNipple
No need for boyfriend pasties! #FreeTheNipple is here to help with all of that!
If you don't already know about #FreeTheNipple, here is a brief overview.
As described for the #FreeTheNipple documentary: "a mass movement of topless women, backed by First Amendment lawyers, graffiti installations, and national publicity stunts, invade New York City to protest censorship hypocrisies and promote gender equality legally and culturally."
#FreeTheNipple is a movement meant to decriminalize female toplessness. More specifically to "to draw public attention to the issue of gender equality, and encourage discussion over what she perceived as America's glorification of violence and repression of sexuality" (As mentioned on the #FreeTheNipple Wikipedia page).
Boob Jokes!
Tired of penis jokes? Don't worry, boob jokes are the new thing! :P Boob jokes are good for body confidence, and for bringing women into the mainstream. Penis jokes just remind me of the patriarchy... Bleh!
Body Positive!
Get to know your boobs! That way you can tell if something is wrong. Plus, your boobs are a part of you, and you should love every part of your body.
You are allowed to be happy and comfy with who you are, in fact its encouraged!
#BestOfNetflix
Thank you Netflix for another amazing Netflix Original!
Hello. Nice to meet you! How are you? Hmm... this feels like a really one-sided conversation... why don't you follow me on social media, so I can get to know you too! | {
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Vodafone Australia will start selling Google’s Android-based Nexus One handset in Australia tomorrow, but stocks are “strictly limited” and customers advised orders will only be taken through its website “on a first come, first served basis”, with no pre-orders available, according to a statement issued this afternoon.
As expected, Vodafone has exclusivity of the Nexus One in Australia. It will sell the device, which has similar specifications to the HTC Desire (exclusively on Telstra’s Next G network), for $0 upfront on a $79 cap on a 24 month contract with a minimum total cost of $1896.
The Nexus will be launched with Android 2.1 (Eclair). It comes with a muliti-touch 3.7″ 800×480 display, a 5 megapixel camera, 4GB memory with option to expand up to 32GB. Connectivity and other features include HSPA, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS.
The Nexus One is hugely popular within the Android modding community due to efforts of modders like Cyanogen, who are constantly pushing the Android operating systems and hand sets to the limit. In Australia, the Google hand-set will be released with the 2.1 OS, Eclair, although the full version of the 2.2 OS (Froyo) was released yesterday.
Delimiter asked Vodafone when Australian customers can expect a Froyo over the air (OTA) update, but the telco did not respond by the time this article was published.
The Nexus One was released globally back in January of this year. The availability of Nexus One by VHA was announced first last week via a VHA twitter account but no further details were provided at that time.
Image credit: Google | {
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We may earn a small affiliate commission from purchases made from our editorially chosen links.
If you live in London and you want to visit best social clubs in London then have a look at this post. You will find top 10 and popular social clubs in London UK. London is famous for its incredible and thriving nightlife. According to survey that London is one of the coolest and popular countries in the world famous for different types of clubs. We would like to mention that London has thousands of nightclubs and social clubs. In this post, we are sharing top 10 and popular social clubs in London UK. The best and popular social clubs are as follows:
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Meet up and Social Clubs in London UK review
1 – Club de Fromage
The most popular and well known social club in London UK is Club De Fromage. This club is located at Islington Academy and it is very popular in student circles. We would like to mention that this social club has recently made the leap into rock with Hairbrush Heroes. According to survey that Club De Fromage is one of the best social clubs in London.
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2 – Café De Paris
The second popular and top social club in London UK is the Café De Paris. It is located at Coventry Street WID 6BL. We would like to mention that every year Café De Paris host number of social related events for big companies. Well known and top celebrities like Dane Bowers and Sam Cooke also visit this social club many times.
3 – Boujis
If we talk about top and popular social clubs in London UK then we should mention Boujis. Well, this well known social club is located at 43 Thurloe Street London. Many well known people like Prince Harry, Lindsey Lohan, Joey Negro also visit this social club so many times.
4 – Ministry Of Sound London
Ministry Of Sound London is famous as a top social club in London. Each weekend, this social club attracts almost 5000 people. This social club has three floors and three bars. Ministry of Sound London is very popular because of its legendary DJ system and different social activities.
5 – Super Club Fabric
Super Club Fabric is also considered to be popular and top social club in London UK. Each weekend, hundreds of people visit this social club for expanding their social circle. If we talk about this social club then we should mention that Super Club Fabric has 5 sound systems and it has a total area o 25000 square feet.
6 – Club Aquarium
While mentioning the top 10 and popular social clubs in London UK then we should mention the name of Club Aquarium. This social club has 5 rooms along with swimming pool. There is no social club in London that can provide such type of calm and relaxation. Moreover, this social club has one chill out room along with VIP lounge.
7 – KOKO
If you want to visit best social clubs in London then you should visit KOKO. Well, KOKO is a well known social club and music venue. It is located at Camden High Street. This social club was opened in the year of 2004 along with capacity venue of 1500 people.
8 – EGG
If we talk about best social clubs in London UK then how can we forget to mention the name of EGG. Well, this social club has the capacity of 800 people and it spread over 3 floors along with balcony terrace and courtyard garden. The beautiful courtyard garden has a bar, garden furniture, artificial grass and swimming pool.
9 – Pacha
Pacha is famous as a top social club and it was reopened in the year of 2001. We would like to mention that this social club builds with oak paneling, beautiful chandeliers, balcony and glass ceiling. Every weekend, this social club attracts so many people.
10 – Rhythm Factory
Lastly, we have Rhythm Factory as one of the best and top social clubs in London UK. The Rhythm Factory is the best social club in London for social meetings, events and parties as well. The atmosphere of this social club is very relaxing and laid back.
Well these are considered to be top and popular social clubs in London UK. Apart from these social clubs, there are so many other social clubs located in different areas of London. Other popular social clubs for the residents of London are Corsica Studios, Herbal and many more. On the whole after mentioning and sharing top 10 and popular social clubs in London UK then it is easy to conclude that if you are living in beautiful London and you want to visit best social clubs for your social network then you should not waste your time and simple visit the above mentioned best social clubs in London UK. | {
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On tonight's episode of "The Crypto Show," we talk to JZA ("Jay-Zah") about his current Dash proposal to fund multi-language Dash news sites and Dash meet-ups throughout the world. We also have a fan and guest of the show, Tim from Kentucky, in studio with us for the first time in over a year. We also discuss earthquake recovery efforts in Mexico, remittance payments, the upcoming potential Bitcoin fork, Dash ATMs, and more.
http://TexasBitcoinConference.com coupon code: CRYPTO
Sponsored by: Dash, CryptoCompare and Defense Distributed
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Tip with Crypto
BTC: 139R6K7fxTYaFf2aXTid84Le1ayqMVvSCq
Dash: XqDeHnokQocBpvffsa2dWz8mX7oTKpoKzc
LTC: LUTJtk4QqXLiDkK8pDKK3jM73VVwbp7oSr
Doge: DQBJ7PSpFzUTwpBrny46Kug4BW8AGtq1YQ
LTBC: 1CevFxMT6srBtTkWx2qrNaJmjtgxbo7pBA ,,, ETH: 0x10cfd6916832566e82b3ab38cc6741dfd7e6164fo
Views: 5,976 | {
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Multinozzle printer can switch between multiple inks up to 50 times per second
By Lindsay Brownell
(BOSTON) — 3D printers are revolutionizing manufacturing by allowing users to create any physical shape they can imagine on-demand. However, most commercial printers are only able to build objects from a single material at a time and inkjet printers that are capable of multimaterial printing are constrained by the physics of droplet formation. Extrusion-based 3D printing allows a broad palette of materials to be printed, but the process is extremely slow. For example, it would take roughly 10 days to build a 3D object roughly one liter in volume at the resolution of a human hair and print speed of 10 cm/s using a single-nozzle, single-material printhead. To build the same object in less than 1 day, one would need to implement a printhead with 16 nozzles printing simultaneously!
Now, a new technique called multimaterial multinozzle 3D (MM3D) printing developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) uses high-speed pressure valves to achieve rapid, continuous, and seamless switching between up to eight different printing materials, enabling the creation of complex shapes in a fraction of the time currently required using printheads that range from a single nozzle to large multinozzle arrays. These 3D printheads themselves are manufactured using 3D printing, enabling their rapid customization and facilitating adoption by others in the fabrication community. Each nozzle is capable of switching materials at up to 50 times per second, which is faster than the eye can see, or about as fast as a hummingbird beats its wings. The research is reported in Nature.
“When printing an object using a conventional extrusion-based 3D printer, the time required to print it scales cubically with the length of the object, because the printing nozzle has to move in three dimensions rather than just one,” said co-first author Mark Skylar-Scott, Ph.D., a Research Associate at the Wyss Institute. “MM3D’s combination of multinozzle arrays with the ability to switch between multiple inks rapidly effectively eliminates the time lost to switching printheads and helps get the scaling law down from cubic to linear, so you can print multimaterial, periodic 3D objects much more quickly.”
The key to MM3D printing’s speedy ink-switching is a series of Y-shaped junctions inside the printhead where multiple ink channels come together at a single output nozzle. The shape of the nozzle, printing pressure, and ink viscosity are all precisely calculated and tuned so that when pressure is applied to one of the “arms” of the junction, the ink that flows down through that arm does not cause the static ink in the other arm to flow backwards, which prevents the inks from mixing and preserves the quality of the printed object. By operating the printheads using a bank of fast pneumatic valves, this one-way flow behavior allows the rapid assembly of multimaterial filaments that flow continuously out from each nozzle, and enables the construction of a 3D multimaterial part. The length of the ink channels can also be adjusted to account for materials that have different viscosities and yield stresses, and thus flow more quickly or slowly than other inks.
“Because MM3D printing can produce objects so quickly, one can use reactive materials whose properties change over time, such as epoxies, silicones, polyurethanes, or bio-inks,” said co-first author Jochen Mueller, Ph.D., a Research Fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS. “One can also readily integrate materials with disparate properties to create origami-like architectures or soft robots that contain both stiff and flexible elements.”
To demonstrate their technique, the researchers printed a Miura origami structure composed of stiff “panel” sections connected by highly flexible “hinge” sections. Previous methods of building such a structure require manually assembling them together into stacked layers – the MM3D printhead was able to print the entire object in a single step by using eight nozzles to continuously extrude two alternating epoxy inks whose stiffnesses differed by four orders of magnitude after being cured. The hinges withstood over 1,000 folding cycles before failing, indicating the high quality of the transitions between the stiff and flexible materials achieved during printing.
MM3D printing can also be used to create more complex objects, including actuating robots. The research team designed and printed a soft robot composed of rigid and soft elastomers in a millipede-like pattern that included embedded pneumatic channels that enable the soft “muscles” to be compressed sequentially by a vacuum, making the robot “walk.” The robot was able to move at nearly half an inch per second while carrying a load eight times its own weight, and could be connected to other robots to carry heavier loads.
Play Multimaterial multinozzle 3D (MM3D) printing can switch between up to eight different inks 50 times per second, allowing the creation of complex, high-quality 3D objects in a fraction of the time currently required by other extrusion-based printing methods. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
“This method enables the rapid design and fabrication of voxelated matter, which is an emerging paradigm in our field,” said corresponding author Jennifer A. Lewis, Sc.D., who is a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at SEAS. “Using our broad palette of functional, structural, and biological inks, disparate materials can now be seamlessly integrated into 3D-printed objects on-demand.”
Importantly, current MM3D printheads can only print periodic (i.e., repeating) parts. But the team envisions that MM3D printing will continue to evolve, eventually featuring nozzles that can extrude different inks at different times, smaller nozzles for greater resolution, and even larger arrays for rapid, single-step 3D printing at a wide range of size and resolution scales. They are also exploring the use of sacrificial inks to create even more complex shapes.
“3D printing is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry by allowing people to create without the need for expensive machinery and raw materials, and this new advance promises to dramatically improve the pace of innovation in this exciting area,” said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS.
Claas Visser, a former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS, also contributed to this work. The research was supported by the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Program through the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation (Harvard MRSEC), and the GETTYLAB. | {
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Improving our components
Lets start by renaming our Budget folder to List. And we’re also renaming all three components inside of it, BudgetList to List, BudgetListHeader to ListHeader and BudgetListBody to ListBody
Renamed components
Now open your List component:
We changed our class name to match our component, and we also changed the slots names.
Open your ListHeader component:
We changed our classes names aswell and changed our template to render from a prop, this way we can reuse this component on other pages.
Now on our ListBody component:
We also made our ListBody component to render from a prop.
Now open your Home page component:
We changed our imports and tags to match our renamed components, added a snackbar so we can display an error in case we fail to fetch data, we also added a new array to our component’s data: budgetHeaders, and the data necessary for our snackbar.
We’ll use budgetHeaders to display the right headers to our list.
We also made a few changes to our getAllBudgets method:
Now instead of passing our data directly to our budgets data, we’re using our new method:
This method accepts an array as first argument, and an unknown number of arguments that’ll create an array named options using the Spread Operator .
Our method will get every item in our targeted array, which in this case, is our budgets, and then create a new object named parsed .
This object will hold every option of our options array, and then be pushed to parsedData array, which is returned.
And finally we catch our error (in case there’s one), activating our snackbar.
Now we need to edit our router, so go to your router folder and open index.js : | {
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Southern Utah University has decided to do away with its Harry Reid Outdoor Engagement Center. Not the building itself, but the current Senate majority leader’s name on the building due to his unpopularity as well as unfulfilled promises in donations.
The St. George Spectrum reports that university president Scott Wyatt and local officials began receiving calls for Reid, a one-time SUU Thunderbird, to no longer have his name on the building. “We had people step up and pledge money towards removing his name. In five days I received pledges totaling $40,000 — in just five days,” said a city councilman in Cedar City, Utah, where the university is located, who took part in the meetings. Wyatt decided not to accept such pledges, however, saying he did not want to disrespect or offend the senator.
While Wyatt initially resisted the calls, he recently decided to drop Reid’s name, but said that it may be given to another building in the future. He noted that another reason for dumping it from the Outdoor Engagement Center is because the expected donations to put his name on the building never came.
“They thought there would substantial donations from Harry Reid’s friends,” Wyatt told the newspaper. “But there has never been any money donated for that purpose.”
The building’s faculty also agreed with removing Reid’s name.
Reid attended SUU before ultimately graduating from Utah State University. | {
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And sure, baseball had far more, and far glitzier, events before the game. But every event seemed to be for VIPs--players, agents, media big shots, or anyone willing to spend lots of cash. Like, say, on tickets to the game itself. Seats for MLB's All-Star Game averaged more than $500, face value.
This week, however, fans got into the MLS version for as little as $50. And a record crowd at Sporting Park took advantage. Those fans, save for the smattering of Italians who followed their favorite team to America, were almost exclusively local, coming from metro KC, nearby Lawrence, and Topeka. Overwhelmingly, those fans were also suburbanites--soccer moms and dads with their soccer kids.
Fútbol may be the game of the masses in many countries, but the North American version has always been more bourgeois, embraced by the middle-class. (Correspondingly, there's generally less brawling or hooliganism around the game as in other nations--although New York Red Bulls fans do have a tradition of chanting something nasty during goal kicks.)
MLS also scored a breakthrough victory, in a way, by losing. Today, it takes a well-prepped team playing hard to defeat the best of MLS. The Italians clearly knew this and took the challenge seriously. It was apparent from the first minute that Roma was determined to avoid the fate of Chelsea, the Premier League powerhouse team that lost to the MLS All-Stars last year in Houston. Roma, in fact, is only the second club, after mighty Manchester United, to have beaten the MLS stars since the league switched to the "us against the world" format--i.e., bringing in teams from other premier leagues around the world--in 2003.
Yes, "other" premier leagues. According to a report by Sporting Intelligence, one that took into account a league's competitive balance, financial health, and stadium amenities, along with quality of play, MLS is the seventh-best soccer league on the planet. MLS scored high for its new stadiums--like the showplace Sporting Park--and got points for parity, too. Seven different MLS teams have won a league title in the last decade. Europe's best, meanwhile--the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, and Germany's Bundesliga--all struggle for competitive balance.
Yes, to be fair, U.S. soccer's overall quality of play still lags behind the best of the world, but not as far behind as it once did. As last week's Gold Cup win by the U.S. Men's National Team--its fifth overall, but its first since 2007--suggests, USA soccer is steadily improving. That's reflected in the dozens of Americans playing for teams overseas, as well as in the mostly homegrown talent of MLS. Compared to the Euro powers, MLS was once akin to Single- or Double-A baseball compared to the majors. In the last few years, they've crept closer to Triple-A.
But perhaps what was most shocking about the MLS All-Star Game on Wednesday was its attendance. The game drew a record-breaking, sold-out, standing-room-only crowd of 21,175. And that's indicative of a larger trend: In 2012, MLS ranked eighth in total attendance globally--for any soccer league, anywhere in the world. More to the point, and maybe even more surprisingly, MLS also averaged more fans per game than two major North American pro sports leagues, the NHL and NBA. The fact that ticket prices come out to about half of what basketball and hockey charge likely has something to do with that. Still, it's impressive stuff for a league that's only been in existence since 1996. MLS attendance figures are expected to rise, as well. The league ambitiously plans to add four new teams by 2015, then four more by the end of the decade for a total of 24.
So, really, who cares if the MLS stars lost to AS Roma? In the broader context, Major League Soccer isn't really trying to compete with Italian Serie A. Or with La Liga or the EPL. Right now, MLS is competing with other North American pro sports leagues like the NHL and NBA--and, this week in Kansas City, Major League Baseball, too. And they're winning.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]. | {
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Amazing. Does this person ever think straight? Does he ...engineer all his opinions?
"[...]market forces, if allowed to play out, might eventually exert a stabilizing role."
??? What is this? Is this guy blind to modern economics? Is he aware of Dr. Stiglitz PhD? "If allowed to play out"??? Whenever there is asymmetry of information --that is always-- markets are imperfect (I suppose, we do not know how imperfect: for all we know, they could lead to the worst possible outcome for the largest proportion of the population!).
"[...] the greater the premium for highly skilled workers, the greater the incentive to find ways to economize on employing their talents."
This sounds like ...letting employers "innovate" on how to prohibit technological innovation, since this is the basic engine of highly skilled employment creation. Alternatively, it could mean, allowing employers to "innovate" on ways in which payment of highly skilled workers will stagnate. That is exactly what happened with the US middle class.
Is there any other way? Does prof. Rogoff agree to allow market forces "to economize on employing skilled workers' talents," but prohibit the previous two choices? Unless, we have to trust the markets to bring about yet another crisis?
Maybe, the point of prof. Rogoff is exactly to let employers try to stagnate highly skilled worker income, and see if such workers will create firms to sell their skills in organized ways. This way, markets will be created (among these new firms) -- the dream of every economist, which will lead to the "best" price for highly skilled labor.
If only we could find ways to automate the work of highly skilled financiers.... Their work is such a long way of producing any benefit for society (in fact the opposite is exaggerated because of the financial crisis), and they are extracting huge rents from the economy with their bonuses. Ah! And neither before nor after the crisis, did I see any result from the "incentive to find ways to economize on employing their talents"!!!
Yes, there can be technological innovation that further pushes the boundary of skill required to have a job, rendering large sectors of knowledge subject to automated procedures and further levels of peoples' skills useless. Automated software production, can and will leave large numbers of plain web and application programmers without a use for their skills and, of course, without a job. This will save some of the need to employ skilled workers. But, such "savings" will always come from the bottom of the scale of skills.
The only case when automation will be able to "save" humanity from most of skilled labor, will be when technological innovation stops and new knowledge becomes mostly the work of computers scanning big data. At that point, knowledge increase will pause, and automation will eventually catch up with all knowledge before that time. There are no signs of a slowdown in knowledge increase. Still, this could come in the form of diminishing returns from new knowledge. There are no broad signs of that either.
| {
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TORONTO
Doug Ford’s mayoral campaign brushed up on its spelling Friday.
Ford’s campaign website, launched less than two weeks ago, now includes a map of his $9-billion subway expansion plan. But a version of the map online on Friday morning contained some embarrassing typos.
The Ford campaign’s map spelled Eglinton as “Eglington” twice and Don Mills as “Done Mills.”
Shortly after the Toronto Sun sent a media request to the campaign about the typos, a new map was posted on the site with Don Mills and Eglinton spelled correctly.
Ford’s campaign spokesman has yet to respond to a media request about the typos.
Tory spokesman Amanda Galbraith argued the episode says a lot about Ford’s transit vision.
“The fact that Doug Ford can’t event get the names of the stations right tells you all you need to know about the credibility of his transit plan,” Galbraith said.
“Unlike Doug Ford, John has a real, credible plan to build transit and cut traffic congestion in this city. That includes SmartTrack, a 52-kilometre, 22-station subway line that would provide all day, two-way transit across the entire city.”
Jamey Heath of the Olivia Chow campaign said spelling isn’t the real issue.
“The real issue is that he’s left off LRTs (from the map) which serve large areas of this city,” Heath said. | {
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Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo says he is "relaxed" about allegations he defrauded the Spanish tax authorities of €15 million, and that he "sleeps very well" knowing he has always done the right thing.
Spanish prosecutors are considering whether Ronaldo should face charges for avoiding the payment of taxes due on image rights income between 2011 and 2014, with a union head at the tax authority claiming that the 32-year-old could face jail time for deliberate evasion
The issue is similar to the one that saw Lionel Messi found guilty of tax evasion in summer 2016, with Spain's Supreme Court having recently ratified a sentence of 21 months for the Barcelona star, although as a first-time offender that punishment was suspended.
Speaking on El Chiringuito TV, Ronaldo said the issue was not bothering him and his only focus at the moment was Saturday's Champions League final against Juventus in Cardiff.
"I am very relaxed about it the truth is very, very relaxed," Ronaldo said. "I know that these things can be resolved with the best decisions. So I am good. I can say from the depth of my heart, looking straight into the camera.
"When you do things well you can go to bed feeling relaxed. And I sleep well always, always. So I am good, and only thinking about the Champions League final."
Asked if he felt mistreated by the media, Ronaldo said the most annoying thing was when people said or published things about him which were just not true.
"I would not say badly treated, I would not put them all in the same bag," he said. "When they say things without knowing the truth, things that are not true, that annoys me. I could spend my whole life denying things."
Meanwhile, Ronaldo has spoken about hi rapport with Barcelona star Messi, telling Fox Argentina: "I like to watch all the good players and Messi is one of them. I really enjoy seeing him on the pitch, along with all the great players.
"Whenever I'm with him, I have a very good relationship with Messi. It's not that I go to his house and eat together. He is not a friend, but I consider him a companion by profession and not a rival because I don't like it, like comparisons. It is part of the work and the world of football." | {
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Manipulate audio with a simple and easy high level interface
Open a WAV file
from pydub import AudioSegment song = AudioSegment . from_wav ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.wav" )
...or an mp3
song = AudioSegment . from_mp3 ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.mp3" )
... or an ogg, or flv, or anything else ffmpeg supports
ogg_version = AudioSegment . from_ogg ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.ogg" ) flv_version = AudioSegment . from_flv ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.flv" ) mp4_version = AudioSegment . from_file ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.mp4" , "mp4" ) wma_version = AudioSegment . from_file ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.wma" , "wma" ) aac_version = AudioSegment . from_file ( "never_gonna_give_you_up.aiff" , "aac" )
Slice audio
# pydub does things in miliseconds ten_seconds = 10 * 1000 first_10_seconds = song [: 10000 ] last_5_seconds = song [ -5000 :]
Make the beginning louder and the end quieter
# boost volume by 6dB beginning = first_10_seconds + 6 # reduce volume by 3dB end = last_5_seconds - 3
Concatenate audio (add one file to the end of another)
without_the_middle = beginning + end
AudioSegments are immutable
# song is not modified backwards = song . reverse ()
Crossfade (again, beginning and end are not modified)
# 1.5 second crossfade with_style = beginning . append ( end , crossfade = 1500 )
Repeat
# repeat the clip twice do_it_over = with_style * 2
Fade (note that you can chain operations because everything returns an AudioSegment)
# 2 sec fade in, 3 sec fade out awesome = do_it_over . fade_in ( 2000 ) . fade_out ( 3000 )
Save the results (again whatever ffmpeg supports) | {
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: A milestone crossed in the making of a new cryogenic rocket engine set the stage for the first flight of the country’s most powerful satellite launcher to date, the GSLV-Mark III. The cryogenic stage and the entire launch vehicle’s readiness is closer to fruition after the engine, technically called CE20, passed the ‘high altitude flight acceptance test’ lasting about 25 seconds at Mahendragiri in mid-December.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to fly its new launch vehicle powered by this new engine around March, and send the 3,200 kg GSAT-19 communication satellite to space on it. The launch was earlier slated for December 2016. MkIII, when it completes trials and commences functioning in the coming years, will double ISRO’s lifting power for communications satellites to 4,000 kilos.
Vital stage
In a few days from now, the rocket’s complete cryogenic third stage, replete with fuel tanks and systems built around the engine, will undergo its qualifying test, S. Somanath, Director of ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Thiruvananthapuram, told The Hindu.
“LPSC has designed and developed the CE20 engine. We are assembling the entire cryogenic stage, which is ready for flight. It will be sent to Sriharikota in a month’s time,” he said.
The cryogenic stage is vital for a GSLV rocket as it gets its final and biggest push in space from this stage; it can take a big communications satellite to higher reaches of 36,000 km above ground. The C25 cryogenic stage was approved at an estimated ₹600 crore as part of the overall ₹2,500-crore MkIII launcher project.
“Realising the CE20 engine was our target in order to achieve India’s capability to lift a four-tonne satellite to GTO (geostationary transfer orbit, around 36,000 km high),” Mr. Somanath said.
“We have been longing for this for a few years. MkIII will be the future work horse after the PSLV,” he said.
MkIII becomes ‘operational’ or ready for regular work after two successful launches in a row. ISRO plans to have one MkIII launch in a year, and the next one is planned for December this year.
Over 200 tests
About the qualification of the CE20, Mr. Somanath said it was the culmination of over 200 tests, some repeated and taking a week to 10 days each. The project picked up pace after early tests on a full-scale engine last year. The space agency has set up a ₹450-crore High Altitude Test (HAT) Facility at the ISRO Propulsion Complex for testing the engine in conditions similar to an actual launch in space.
Calling it an important milestone ahead of the MkIII launch, ISRO said the HAT test of December met all the test objectives.
“The testing of the engine in the HAT facility has helped in finalising the engine start and shut down sequence for the flight,” Mr. Somanath added.
The vehicle’s first two qualified stages are already in Sriharikota, namely the solid-fuelled S200 and the liquid-fuelled L110 stages. | {
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Lisa Guardiola, who lives behind the house, said her "whole house shook" and she thought something hit the roof of her house. She said she felt lucky and grateful because on a normal summer day, her kids would have been outside playing at the time the plane crashed. But she kept them inside because of the heat. She went outside and saw her neighbor's house in flames. | {
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Trade was a hallmark issue of President Donald Trump's campaign. He promised time and time again to make trade "fair" for the United States and unapologetically berated prior years of trade agreements and practices.
So naturally, in his first year of office, the U.S. trade deficit hit its highest level in nine years.
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On Tuesday, the Commerce Department announced that the the deficit for goods and services rose to $566 billion — the highest level since 2008, when it stood at $708.7 billion, the Associated Press reported. Imports outweighed exports $2.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion.
Two of the biggest deficits in 2017 came with — wait for it — China and Mexico.
In 2017, "the goods deficit with China hit a record $375.2 billion" and the deficit with Mexico swelled to $71.1 billion, up from $55.6 in 2016. The fourth quarter was one of the worst; in December, the "trade deficit in goods and services rose to $53.1 billion, up from $50.4 billion in November and highest since October 2008," the AP reported.
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Trump has often hit Mexico and China the hardest on trade, and his administration is currently in the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The president's rhetoric towards China has fluctuated from time to time. On the campaign, Trump was a vociferous critic of current U.S. trade practices with China, but since he took office, he shifted his tone because he hopes the Chinese government will help reduce tensions with North Korea.
However, there were points throughout the year where Trump would praise Chinese leadership and other points where he would vocalize his criticism and call for further action on North Korea, or on trade. Sometimes, it all happened in a three-day span.
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The trade deficit is not an issue unique to Trump, as presidents have battled with it for decades, not seeing a surplus since 1975. Some economists have predicted the deficit will widen, and believe it's due to a growing economy and the fact that Americans will purchase more imported goods when provided an opportunity, Market Watch reported.
But, Trump will have to do more than just issue damning rhetoric over Twitter in order to actually combat the trade deficit and usher in the so-called fair deals he's promised. | {
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india
Updated: Jun 01, 2019 21:30 IST
Police have booked newly elected Panaji Congress MLA Atanasio Monserrate, the city mayor and a former deputy mayor for allegedly molesting a woman during an anti-encroachment drive outside a casino in the city on Friday.
Police swung into action after the woman filed a complaint against them. The incident took place on Friday evening during a drive organised by the corporation of Panaji against encroachments by casinos on the embankment of the river Mandovi that flows through the city.
During the drive, Monserrate, mayor Uday Madkaikar, former mayor Yatin Parekh and others confronted the casino staff who were protesting the drive. In her complaint, the woman alleged that the MLA and his associates abused her, pushed her and made vulgar gestures. An FIR has been filed under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 354 (outraging modesty), 504 (breach of the peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
He denied the charges and said whatever happened was in full public view and recorded by the news media, which was also present. The three men filed for anticipatory bail on Saturday.
In the run-up to by-elections, Monserrate had promised to rid the Mandovi of boat-borne casinos within 100 days of taking office. He is already facing charges of rape of a young employee, with the north Goa district court expected to pass an order in the next two weeks. | {
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In the living room of a house at the end of a narrow country road in central Vietnam, a little way off the main highway, the skeleton of a tiger was laid out on the floor—the only complete one they had for sale, the man told the pair of visitors.
It was an attractive offer for someone looking to make tiger bone wine, a coveted brew made from bones soaked in rice wine, but what the visitors were interested in were the live tigers.
After some discussion, they were taken to a nearby house. Whoever owned it clearly had some money. It was nicely painted, with a large cement front yard, plenty of trees, and several expensive SUVs out front. It was guarded by a high steel fence.
Exclusive: Graphic Video Shows Evidence of Illegal Tiger Trade Viewer discretion advised. This video, obtained by investigators from the Wildlife Justice Commission, shows a tiger at a facility in Southeast Asia being killed by electrocution, as well as tiger bones being boiled for medicinal paste. The video was shared over WeChat, a Chinese social media and messaging app, by someone known to be involved in the tiger trade. WJC says sellers sometimes send videos like this one to potential buyers to demonstrate authenticity. National Geographic decided to share it to show the reality of tiger farms.
Courtesy Wildlife Justice Commission
The group passed through the living room and walked toward the back of the house. There, a woman removed a piece of the wall to reveal a hidden door. Behind it were three tigers, each in a cage, locked in darkness. A basket containing a few hundred chicken heads sat nearby. One of the tigers could be heard grunting, padding back and forth in his cage.
There were more tigers in the backyard, the woman said, inviting the visitors to sit down to tea in the living room, where she made the offer. They could buy one of the tigers, whose price is determined per kilogram, plus an extra fee for processing the skin. Delivery to any of several cities in China was included in the base price, and for no extra, the buyers could also have the bones, teeth, genitals, and claws if they wished.
They told the woman they’d think about it. Then they left.
The visitors were undercover investigators with the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC). This nonprofit based in the Hague works to expose the criminal networks behind the illegal wildlife trade, and since 2016, WJC’s Operation Ambush has been focusing on captive tiger facilities in Southeast Asia. They’ve shared with National Geographic several case briefings, photos, and video clips—a body of work that provides a rare inside look at one of the industries behind the multibillion-dollar black market in wild animals and their parts.
View Images The Wildlife Justice Commission’s undercover investigators visited a house in Vietnam that had eight tiger skins (two pictured) and a taxidermied tiger. Photograph Courtesy Wildlife Justice Commission
CAPTIVE TIGERS
From elephant ivory to orchids, the illegal wildlife trade touches tens of thousands of species around the world. It’s become increasingly sophisticated, with organized networks obtaining, transporting, selling, and bribing their way to big profits. The illegal trade in captive tigers and their parts is just one piece of it.
Fewer than 4,000 tigers likely remain in the wild, but as many as 8,000 are held in captive facilities across China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some of these are licensed by national governments and are open to the public, marketed as zoos, conservation centers, and tourist entertainment venues. One example is Thailand’s infamous Tiger Temple, which operated under the guise of tourism. Many facilities are akin to factory farms, speed-breeding tigers like livestock to satisfy mainly Chinese and Vietnamese demand for their parts. Others are small-scale basement or backyard businesses existing outside the law.
View Images Captive tiger facilities in Thailand that have been accused of illegally trading the cats or their body parts often operate under the guise of entertainment and tourism, such as the Tiger Temple, which was raided by authorities in 2016 and shut down. Its owners are now planning to open a zoo. Photograph by Steve Winter, Nat Geo Image Collection
The bones of captive tigers are often used for wine or medicinal paste; the skin is used for furniture upholstery and décor such as rugs or wall hangings, and the teeth may be set in gold and turned into jewelry. Being able to wear, display, or consume tiger products is a coveted status symbol among some Chinese and Vietnamese.
Tiger breeding centers started in China in the mid-1980s as an effort to reduce poaching of wild tigers, but conservationists say they only exacerbate it. “The very existence of these facilities could potentially invite poaching from the wild to stock them,” says Kanitha Krishnasamy, acting director of the Southeast Asia office of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring organization. Furthermore, their existence helps erase any stigma associated with using the parts of such a highly endangered animal, she says.
The commercial international trade in tigers and their parts has been banned since 1987, after a vote by the countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international treaty regulating the wildlife trade. In 2007 the CITES parties approved a measure stating that tigers shouldn’t be bred for trade.
Yet captive tigers are showing up alongside wild tigers in the illegal trade. The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which tracks confiscations of tigers and tiger parts, estimates that nearly 38 percent of live, frozen, and taxidermied tigers seized by law enforcement between 2010 and mid-2018 were from captive sources, judging by the condition of the skins and the circumstances in which they were trafficked.
View Images Much of the illegal international tiger trade goes to China and Vietnam, but these tiger heads were seized by law enforcement in the U.S. and are now stored at the National Wildlife Property Repository, in Colorado. Photograph by Kate Brooks, Redux
BASEMENTS AND BACKYARDS
The house in Vietnam with the tigers in the hidden back room appeared to be a family operation. “This is one of many small households [in Vietnam] keeping a number of tigers,” says Doug Hendrie, who heads the wildlife crimes unit of Education for Nature - Vietnam (ENV), which has been investigating Vietnam’s captive tiger trade since 2007.
Most of Vietnam’s captive tigers are in licensed public and private zoos, many of which are suspected of supplying the illegal trade, but the province of Nghe An, in north-central Vietnam, is known for having a number of illegal basement and backyard tiger operations. That’s where WJC went.
View Images Investigators with the nonprofit Education for Nature - Vietnam took this photograph of a tiger in a barren enclosure at a farm in the country in 2016. Photograph Courtesy Education for Nature - Vietnam
The older sister of the woman who made the offer to the undercover investigators had explained that as buyers they’d be invited to witness the killing to ensure that it was the agreed-on animal. They’d need to pay a 30 percent deposit to her Chinese bank account ahead of time and the remaining 70 percent after the tiger’s parts were delivered to China.
“Both [sisters] were very relaxed,” says one of the WJC investigators, who posed as a Chinese buyer. “It’s just a way of doing business for them. It’s just a way of making money.”
While much of the demand for tiger parts comes from China, Vietnam has its own long history with tiger consumption. Tiger bone paste, a traditional medicine, is a uniquely Vietnamese product, Krishnasamy says. The domestic trade of tiger parts within Vietnam is illegal, and tiger bone paste is one of the main drivers of the illegal trade within the country.
View Images Tiger bone paste is used in traditional Vietnamese medicine and is the main driver of the illegal tiger trade in the country. It’s made by stewing tiger bones for seven days and drying the remaining substance into blocks. Photograph Courtesy Education for Nature - Vietnam
Usually the process begins with a broker assembling a group of people who agree to buy a tiger together, Hendrie says. The broker finds a tiger trader, handles the financial transaction, and sees to the delivery. The buyers then gather for the cooking.
The broker is also in charge of hiring a tiger bone “chef,” a specialist who makes the paste. The person boils the tiger bones, likely along with the bones of several other animals, for seven days, Hendrie says. The resulting brown substance, the consistency of porridge, is poured out, dried, and cut into bricks. Each buyer then gets a certain number of bricks, which are kept, sold, or given as gifts. Bits of brick are usually shaved off and mixed into wine and drunk, according to Hendrie.
IMPORTING TIGERS
When the WJC investigators first went to Vietnam, the younger sister told them, “My family has the most tiger skins.” During one meeting, she showed them a back room where four tiger skins were strung up on wooden pallets, two dried skins were rolled up nearby, and another two skins were soaking in some sort of disinfecting liquid. There was also a ninth tiger, whole and taxidermied.
To keep up with demand, she said, they sometimes import tigers from Laos. Vietnam’s western neighbor is another hot spot for captive tiger breeding and the illegal trade, so WJC also sent investigators there.
One place they went was Muang Thong, a notorious Laotian tiger farm, with links to international trade going back years. In 2009 a manager at Muang Thong told Target magazine, a Laotian publication, that “foreign business people came here to view tigers at the farm, but they did not decide to buy since [the] tigers were not big enough for export.” Commercial exports would have been illegal.
The magazine also linked Muang Thong to Vinasakhone, a Laotian company that the Guardian revealed in 2016 as one of a small number of businesses the government authorized to move volumes of protected wildlife through certain border crossings, in contravention of both CITES and Laotian law. In 2016 the CITES secretariat reported a site visit to the “Vinasakhone tiger farm," and a representative confirmed to National Geographic that the facility is also known as Muang Thong.
The Guardian also reported that it reviewed compelling evidence that Vinasakhone had been illegally killing and selling tigers to buyers in Vietnam, China, and the “Golden Triangle,” where Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar meet and where trafficking of humans, wildlife, and drugs is rampant.
The Muang Thong manager who spoke to WJC investigators explained that tigers are killed to order. A potential buyer, usually Vietnamese, he said, arranges with the farm owner to visit the facility and choose a tiger. The tiger is killed, usually by lethal injection. Then a butcher—buyers usually bring their own—processes it.
“It’s about overseeing the whole process,” says Sarah Stoner, head of WJC’s intelligence unit. “You buy the whole animal as a commodity, and you can do whatever you want with it from there.”
One of the Vietnamese sisters also told investigators that they sometimes get tiger cubs from Africa. According to a recent report by two South African NGOs, the country has at least 56 captive tiger facilities. Vietnam has reported receiving more than 50 live tigers from South Africa since 2010, according to CITES trade data. South Africa also exports lion bones to Southeast Asia, which experts like Krishnasamy believe are passed off as tiger bones and enter the illegal trade. From 2008 through 2015, nearly 98 percent of lion skeletons exported from South Africa went to either Vietnam or Laos, according to the nonprofit welfare and conservation group Born Free Foundation. One of the importers in Laos—Vinasakhone.
View Images A camera trap recorded this tiger in a wildlife sanctuary in Thailand. In Vietnam and Laos, tigers are functionally extinct in the wild. Photograph by Steve Winter, Nat Geo Image Collection
GOVERNMENT PROMISES
In May Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith announced an order prohibiting the establishment of new wildlife farms and recommended existing ones be turned into zoos and safari parks. It followed a pledge at a CITES meeting in 2016 in which the government said it planned to start looking for ways to close down its tiger farming industry.
“This [order] is of serious concern as it indicates that the owners of [the six known] farms, all of which have been implicated in illegal trade, will not face prosecution,” said Debbie Banks, who heads EIA’s tiger program, in an email. “Secondly, if this is the model we have seen in Thailand—where tourists are able to interact with tigers, breeding continues at rapid rates, and multiple facilities have been implicated in illegal trade out the back door—there is serious concern that similar illegal trade and breeding will continue in Laos.”
The Laotian government did not respond to requests for comment.
Muang Thong has already split in two, with one of its new enterprises becoming an entertainment-oriented tiger center.
Vietnam, as part of its new penal code this year, made the possession of tigers a criminal offense and raised the maximum penalties for transporting, trading, and trafficking tigers and other endangered species. Nevertheless, Hendrie says, many zoos in Vietnam are still licensed to possess and breed tigers, assuring a ready source for years to come. The Vietnamese government and environmental police did not respond to requests for comment.
Vietnam has laws robust enough to crack down on the illegal tiger trade, but enforcement is often lacking because of limited resources, lack of expertise in combating organized crime, and, at times, corruption, according to Stoner.
There’s also another hurdle: “From our experience, Vietnamese tiger owners and traders tend to be more suspicious of Vietnamese buyers than Chinese buyers, which has made it difficult for Vietnam’s police to send in undercover agents,” says WJC’s chief of investigations, who stays anonymous for security reasons. It’s much less likely that a Chinese person would be an undercover police officer, he says. That’s why WJC always shares intelligence with law enforcement and offers to work with them, including “lending” undercover operatives.
The organization is working with Vietnamese law enforcement on this case, and Operation Ambush is ongoing. Usually WJC doesn’t share much publicly before cases have concluded, but the commission believes it’s important to immediately shine light on the brutality of the Southeast Asia’s tiger trade and the urgent need to address it.
“Everybody [in this village] knows what they’re doing,” says the investigator who visited the house in Vietnam and spoke to National Geographic. And yet the business continues to operate. | {
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Washington State Trooper flying confederate flag above his patrol car disturbed neighbor
Andrew Binion | Kitsap
SILVERDALE — A Washington State Patrol trooper who flew a Confederate flag at his Silverdale home with his official vehicle parked underneath in view of neighbors took the flag down after his supervisors were tipped off by a public records request from the Kitsap Sun.
Trooper James Manning claimed he inherited the flag from his grandfather and further claimed he was not aware of the "implications" of such a symbol, State Patrol spokesman Kyle Moore said.
Manning, who has been with the State Patrol since at least 2002, did not return a message left Wednesday with State Patrol dispatchers seeking comment.
The Confederate flag is so inflammatory that simply flying it on private property or being photographed wearing Confederate flag boxers has resulted in the firing of law enforcement officers from their jobs in other states. Moore said the State Patrol was not investigating the matter as misconduct because Manning took down the flag and no official complaint was lodged.
MORE: Washington mayors call for removal of Confederate reminders
The flag could still affect Manning's ability to do his job, however. A local defense attorney said if Manning investigated a person of color, the attorney would try to use the photo at trial to impugn Manning’s credibility in front of jurors. The attorney cited two court cases — one from federal court in 2001 that found that it is reasonable to view the flag as a racist symbol.
The flag was brought to the attention of the Kitsap Sun after a person who lives near Manning was disturbed by the association of the publicly owned vehicle of a law enforcement officer parked under the flag. That person asked not to be named, saying they feared retaliation from the State Patrol.
Moore said because the person contacted the newspaper and didn’t file a complaint directly with the State Patrol, there was nothing to investigate. During the same interview, Moore confirmed supervisors can initiate misconduct investigations without a complaint from the public.
Moore said complaints from the public can be filed anonymously online by going to the State Patrol’s website.
MORE: Washington governor to boost immigrant legal aid funding
Manning's supervisors were tipped off about the flag after the Kitsap Sun requested on June 1 the personnel file of the trooper assigned to the vehicle and any regulations regarding the display of potentially offensive symbols, specifically the Confederate flag.
The State Patrol responded that it would take up to 30 days to fulfill the request. The agency confirmed Manning’s name and badge number, which is also the license plate number on the car. Kitsap County property records list Manning as the owner of the house.
In the meantime, Moore said the commander of District 8 — which encompasses the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas — was notified of the content of Kitsap Sun’s unfulfilled public records request by the Office of Professional Standards. The commander then notified Manning’s supervisor, Moore said, who went to his house off Clear Creek Road and apparently observed the flag. The Confederate flag has since been replaced with an American flag.
Before filing the records request, two reporters went to Manning’s house on June 1 and photographed the flag with Manning’s State Patrol vehicle parked underneath.
MORE: Supreme Court: State now in compliance with education funding ruling
Capt. Chris Old is the District 8 commander but was unavailable Friday. Lt. Dan Sharp was filling in for Old and said he was told the trooper removed the flag because he did not want to offend anyone. He said that an ancestor of his had fought in the Civil War.
"To him he was honoring his family and history, he had no ill intent," Sharp said.
Some believe the flag can be viewed as a symbol of pride for living in the American South or as a symbol of nonconformity or rebellion.
However, the flag has long been associated with racial segregation and is displayed at Ku Klux Klan and Nazi gatherings. Most recently, since 2015, the United States has seen a highly publicized effort to remove from public places the flag and statues honoring Confederate figures.
The latest backlash against such symbols started after a white supremacist murdered nine black church members in South Carolina. Dylann Roof, who has been sentenced to death for the attack on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, took photos of himself holding the flag and posted them online before the massacre.
MORE: Realtor warns against losing fee waiver on some VA loans
Since then, other police departments have tried to immediately distance themselves from officers who have displayed the flag. At least two former officers have sued, saying their termination violated their free speech rights.
A police sergeant in Georgia fired for conduct unbecoming an officer for flying the Confederate flag on her property — which she said she did to honor her late husband — has sued her former department for violating her free speech rights. That case is pending in U.S. District Court.
An officer in South Carolina, fired for posting a photo of himself in Confederate flag underwear, also sued in federal court and settled for $55,000.
Moore said there is not a regulation specifically addressing the display of the Confederate flag on a trooper’s private property or with their state-owned car under it, but he said there is a prohibition on conduct that could “bring discredit to the department or themselves.”
MORE: U.S. Supreme Court tie favors Indian tribes in state culvert case
Despite the intended message of the flag on Manning’s property, or the State Patrol’s position on the matter, simply flying the flag could enter court cases where Manning is called to testify, one local attorney said.
“If I ever have a trial with this trooper that involves a minority defendant, I will move to admit the photograph as a racist act under rules that allow defendants to explore bias of those that testify against them,” attorney Adrian Pimentel wrote in an email to the Kitsap Sun. “There is considerable persuasive authority for admission of this photograph. Courts have consistently held that the Confederate flag is legitimately viewed as a symbol of white supremacy.”
Pimentel said the explanation for flying the flag is problematic.
“If you have a trooper who doesn’t understand the ramifications of flying the Confederate flag then the Washington State Patrol has a serious sensitivity training issue they have to address immediately,” he said.
MORE: Derelict sailboat off Port Orchard had a large stash of used needles aboard | {
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(Vignetta di Bandanas )
Segnalazioni
Quando memoria e lotta civile fanno paura. Distrutta la targa in ricordo di Renata Fonte - di Antonella Mascali
[NO]vizi - La satira va in mostra
Napoli. Un’esposizione del genere è più unica che rara. Questa rassegna, ideata e curata da Mario Natangelo, sposa la vignetta satirica al Fumetto – con il salone Comicon – e all’arte contemporanea – con l’esposizione al museo Madre...
...Gli autori di Novizi contano firme eccellenti come Marassi, Ellekappa, Vincino, Franzaroli, Mora con le ultime rivelazioni Natangelo, Tonus, Fricca. E, come ospiti stranieri Kap (La Vanguardia) e Catherine (Charlie Hebdo)...
Leggi tutto
Ha paura. Sono al telefono con un ricercatore dell’Istituto *** gli chiedo dati sullain queste ultime tre settimane, la prima riguarda il congresso di fondazione del Pdl, il G20 a Londra, il vertice Nato a Strasburgo, le altre due sono quelle del post terremoto.Mi dice piano: “Ho capito” e poi resta in silenzio. Immagino stia consultando fogli, invece sento il suo respiro regolare e nessun altro rumore.Perché parla piano? gli chiedo.E lui: “Perché”, mi dice. Poi va in pausa, come in un fermo immagine, anche se sento piccole voci in sottofondo: “Perché qui il clima è molto cambiato, mi spiego?…”.Provo a sbloccarlo: perbacco, e come sarebbero questi dati?”. Quando dice “clamorosi” rallenta di più.Clamorosi come?Mi ignora: “Non credo che usciranno. Non ora”.Non lo crede. E infatti di dati, fino a questo momento non ne girano affatto. Dimostrerebbero come e quanto il Cavaliere abbia, senza alcuna interferenza, leogni giorno e ogni notte, in diretta e in replica, nei tg e nei contenitori del mattino, del pomeriggio, nelle prime e nelle seconde serate. Nei panni:1. delin nome del suo popolo, cantando sull’attenti sul palco, davanti alla platea in festa, con la mano sul cuore, inondato dalla luce dei riflettori e dai sorrisi delle sue giovani fanciulle governative;2. del, che fa gli scherzi alla comitiva, ride, disturba, arriva in ritardo alla foto di gruppo per fare il bullo al telefono e risolvere da solo crisi delicatissime;3. delche piange col suo popolo; del capo cantiere che organizza i lavori, le tende, la scuola, gli scavi; della guida che rassicura; del buon re che allevia e che promette; del dentista che cura; del timoniere che conduce.Ripete: “Clamorosi”.Clamorosi quanto?“Lei pensi a un tempo e poi lo raddoppi, lo triplichi”.L’opposizione?Franceschini, Di Pietro, chi altro?“L’opposizone che conta per lui è Bossi. Che infatti è sparito. E’ l’unico che gli faccia ombra insieme con la crisi, sparita anche lei, lo ha notato?”.Mi dice questi numeri o no?“Fossi matto.. Se mi cita vengo a mangiare a casa sua, d’accordo?”.Promesso. | {
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He has 16 sandwiches on his menu, but is happy to customise each one of them to his patrons' tastes. Sanjay Singh will put only beetroot and cheese in one; butter and powdered masala (salt, black salt, cardamom, cumin, and coriander seeds ground together) in another; tomatoes and garlic chutney for people who want that mix; and capsicum and butter for a few others. Like most sandwichwallahs in our city, he assembles exactly what the customer desires – easily a few hundred combinations drawn from the handful of ingredients he has bought and barely processed. No restaurant affords the level of customisation to a snack, or meal, as a Mumbai rasta sandwichwallah.
Kala Ghoda-based sandwich maker Singh started out working at his elder brother's sandwich stall 18 years ago, as soon as he arrived from Benares. He was 12 then and the menu listed two items: vegetable sandwich and vegetable toast. They served about 100 sandwiches a day. Today, the daily average is 350 sandwiches and toasties, almost each one minutely customised. The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in February is boom time; they sell 700 items a day during the event. Singh, who has since taken over the running of the stall from his brother, works with three other people on any given day. He calls them "mere bhai", but that's an ambiguous description. In truth, they are cousins, nephews, or people from his gaon (village).
Singh wakes up every morning at 5am, makes the chutneys for his sandwiches and travels from his home in Bhayander to Kala Ghoda where he sets up his stall at 9am. Before he opens shop, he buys vegetables from the Bora Bazar market in Fort. The breadwallah (who also supplies the ketchup) and coalwallah visit his stall daily to provide the remaining supplies. Singh emphasised to us the importance of a good workstation. The cutting surface must be at the right height, and there should be enough storage room for veggies and bread as well as the leftover trimmings that will be given away to street kids at the end of the day. All the ingredients must always be at arm's length. A folding table hinged to the side of the stall is part of the assembly line. Singh slides the sandwiches to his co-worker Gopal Singh, who fans the coal burner, flips the chimta, and stacks the ready-to-eat toasts.
Like most sandwichwallahs in Mumbai, the Singhs are deeply loyal to their brand of bread. Only Wibs is good enough for them. Britannia bread tends to have holes in it and is too tangy, according to Sanjay Singh. However, his "bhais" and he don't eat their own sandwiches for lunch. Singh's nephew comes to the stall with their dabbas (lunch boxes) at around lunch time and works at the stall for the rest of the day. There is a small steel stool behind the work area, and the bhais take turns for their lunch breaks. When they need to use the loo, they go to Jehangir Art Gallery and buy a token. They leave for home at 9.30pm after Singh stores the stall near a friend's shop in a nearby lane; he gets to bed at midnight at the earliest.
The stall is open 364 days a year; its annual day off is Holi. Over the past 18 years, Singh has had his stall remade four or five times either because the old one got worn out, or because he needed a larger space for his growing business. Singh is keenly attentive to the demands of his customers. "Jab log demand karte hain, toh hum nayee cheez shuru karte hain," says Singh, who started making sandwiches with brown bread three years ago when regulars started demanding it. When passers-by started asking "Grill hai kya?", Singh – who still makes most of the toasts in a "chimta" press over coals – saved money to buy a grill and started serving Right Place-style veg cheese sandwiches two years ago. Singh's observations of market trends also led to the addition of the two most fancy (and strange) items on the menu – the Chinese toast with chopped veggies and Szechuan sauce, and the Russian toast, which is the Chinese one plus beetroot and potatoes.
Sandwich making by numbers (consumed per day)
Green chutney: 7 kilos
Garlic chutney: 4 kilos
Butter: 3 kilos
Loaves: 35
Potatoes: 20 kilos
Tomatoes: 17 kilos
Cucumbers: 15 kilos
Onions: 15 kilos
Garlic: 4 kilos
Capsicum: 2.5 kilos
Beetroot: 4 kilos
Cheese: 4 kilos
Coal: 7 kilos
Raddi paper for serving and wrapping: 2 kilos
Cheapest sandwich: Aloo slice for 13 rupees (14p)
Most expensive sandwich: Samosa cheese grill for Rs60
Best-selling item: Vegetable toast without cheese, about 200 a day
Number of veg toasts ready-to-eat at all times: 10-12
Size of the tarpaulin put up on rainy days: 15ft by 15ft
Amount of salt to make masala: 4 kilos a month
Hours spent working every day: 16.5 | {
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The openly sexist presidential candidate has faced an extraordinary backlash. So why do many women support him?
They are not victims, and they don’t need anyone’s sympathy. They have no time for “whiny feminists” – and no need for the government to guarantee equal pay.
They earned what they’ve achieved, often juggling a professional life with running a home and raising a family. And they want the right to bear arms to protect themselves and their loved ones.
They are the anti-feminist women backing the far-right, former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s upcoming presidential runoff election – a man who has been repeatedly accused of misogyny and racism.
“I really don’t see any reason for feminism today — men and women are equal in Brazil,” said Ana de Moraes, 56, a retired lawyer who intends to vote for Bolsonaro on 28 October. “These feminist women screaming and taking off their clothes – it’s very backwards. Bolsonaro isn’t taking any rights away from women.”
'Stop this disaster': Brazilian women mobilise against 'misogynist' far-right Bolsonaro Read more
Over the course of a 30-year political career, Bolsonaro has earned notoriety from his sexist remarks, once telling a fellow lawmaker she didn’t even “deserve” being raped and more recently saying he wouldn’t pay women the same salary as men.
In 2013, he called the secretary of women’s policy a “big dyke”. During the impeachment of the country’s first female president, he dedicated his vote to the dictatorship colonel who had overseen her torture.
Such language made him a hate figure for many, and fuelled a high rejection rate among women: even as Bolsonaro pulled ahead in the polls, 50% of female voters said they would never back him.
Many pollsters had presumed that Bolsonaro’s misogyny had created a natural limit to his share of the women’s vote, but in the final stages of the campaign, that expectation has shattered.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A rally in support of Jair Bolsonaro. Photograph: Cris Faga/REX/Shutterstock
The weekend before the first round on 7 October, tens of thousands of people joined marches across the country under the slogan #EleNão (“not him”) in the biggest female-organized street demonstration in Brazilian history.
But polling showed that after the #EleNão protests, Bolsonaro’s support among women actually rose.
And far from warming up to feminism, Bolsonaro and his supporters doubled down with their attacks.
When Bolsonaro supporters held their own demonstrations, his son, Eduardo, pronounced: “Rightwing women are prettier than leftwing women. They don’t show the breasts in the streets, nor do they defecate in the streets. Rightwing women are more hygienic.”
Memes circulate on WhatsApp and Facebook – where the majority of Bolsonaro’s campaign has played out – juxtaposing images of pro- and anti-Bolsonaro women.
In one, a female Bolsonaro supporter stands surrounded by Brazilian flags, eyes closed and fist in the air, with a sleeping child over her shoulder; the woman from the #EleNão protest is yelling, topless and daubed with body paint. (The vast majority of protest participants were fully clothed.)
Another widely shared image showed a little boy wearing a shirt that said, “Mum’s a feminista; I don’t grow up to be machista”, with text written over it, “Sweetie, if your mum’s a feminist, you wouldn’t even be born, you’d have been aborted!”
And such messages are resonating. According to polls before the fragmented first round of 13 candidates, Bolsonaro was the most popular candidate among women, with 27% of the vote. The latest poll for the runoff election says he has roughly 42% of the female electorate.
“These women who are naked in the streets screaming – they don’t represent me,” said De Moraes, the retired lawyer.
“A real feminist is a woman who gets up early, works hard and fights for her independence, not these women who whine and have barely worked a day in their lives,” said Linda Fontes, 23, a real estate administrator from Rio’s poor periphery who describes herself as a Bolsonaro “fanatic”.
Fontes has been mugged twice, and supports Bolsonaro’s proposal to loosen gun ownership laws so that “upstanding citizens” can protect themselves from Brazil’s soaring violent crime.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women at an anti-Bolsonaro protest. His campaign spurred the largest female-organized street demonstration in Brazil’s history. Photograph: STRINGER/Reuters
“I need to be able to protect myself in the chaos that is Rio de Janeiro today,” she said.
Female Bolsonaro voters shrug off his refusal to support legislation to ensure equal pay, despite studies showing that women in Brazil earn 22.5% less than men.
I hope my fellow Brazilians see through Bolsonaro before it’s too late | Luiza Sauma Read more
“Salaries for both men and women should be based on merit and responsibilities. Women today are well aware of their rights, obligations and duties. We don’t need the government for that,” said Maria Alice do Lago, a seamstress from rural São Paulo state.
Like some voters for the US president Donald Trump, many female Bolsonaro voters say they don’t agree with everything he says – or like the way he says it – but they still intend to vote for him.
Fontes, the real estate worker, brushed his most notorious remarks off as jokes. “Sometimes he doesn’t express himself well,” she said.
“Maybe his tone sometimes lacks respect,” said Do Lago, the seamstress. “But who am I to judge?”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bolsonaro supporters celebrate outside his home in Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Bolsonaro has no major party behind him, and has had very little advertising time on television and radio, but his supporters have dominated the fight online, flooding social networks with pro-Bolsonaro memes and testimonies rejecting the “feminist agenda”.
“I’ve never played the victim card,” says an unnamed black woman supporter in one such clip. “I support the right. I’m feminine and I love it. I shave my armpits. Yes, I cook for my husband, yes, I wash my husband’s clothes – there’s no problem with that.”
Márcio Moretto Ribeiro, a University of São Paulo professor who tracked pro-Bolsonaro content on Facebook, found that that posts criticizing feminism were among the top three most-shared topics.
“It was evident that Bolsonaro would have a problem with women,” he said. “[But] Bolsonaro and his internet base reacted – they adjusted the discourse to position him on the side of women but against feminists.
“It’s a risky strategy, but it worked.” | {
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560 shares
CBS officially announced The Amazing Race 31’s teams today, and moved its start date up almost a month, pairing the show on Wednesday nights with Survivor: Edge of Extinction for its final weeks.
The 11 teams have been well-known since early last June, when the race began—and when Phil Keoghan announced that there’d be a “reality clash” this season.
TAR 31 will now premiere April 17, airing Wednesdays at 9, right after Survivor. It will take Million Dollar Mile’s timeslot.
The Amazing Race was set to debut May 22, the week after Survivor’s finale, and it was going to air Wednesdays at 8 in Survivor’s timeslot.
The early start date seems to be because ratings for Million Dollar Mile, the new CBS competition from the producers of Big Brother, have been dismal: On Wednesday, Survivor had 7.41 million viewers and a 1.5 in 18-49, while Million Dollar Mile had 3.26 million, and a 0.8 among 18- to 49-year-olds.
Moving up an already-filmed season of an established format—and one that has cast members from Survivor—seems like a smart way to try to take advantage of Survivor’s lead-in.
Only two episodes of Million Dollar Mile have aired so far. It’s being bumped to Saturdays at 8, though that’s “effective Saturday, May 4,” CBS said.
It’s unclear what will happen with Million Dollar Mile between now and then.
The Amazing Race 31 teams and preview
Phil Keoghan in a video he posted from the starting line for Amazing Race 31, which features teams from Big Brother, Survivor, and Amazing Race competing against each other.
This season is the first-ever CBS reality show to simultaneously include cast members from all three of its iconic reality series: The Amazing Race, Survivor, and Big Brother.
A press release calls it “the first reality showdown among some of the most memorable and competitive players” and asks, “Will the former Racers’ travel experience be the most helpful? Will the former Survivors’ outwit, outplay and outlast the competition? Or, will the Big Brother players’ abilities to adapt and expect the unexpected make the difference?”
If there must be cross-overs with cast members appearing on other shows, I think this is the best possible version of it, because TAR incorporates elements from both of the other shows, in the form of a competition—a race around the world—that’s a pretty even playing field.
Here’s a preview. My favorite part is when the announcer says “all of your favorite players” and then Rupert laughs his big laugh.
Here’s the full team list from the CBS press release, along with the relationship the show will use to identify them, and their previous seasons.
Art Velez (49) and John James “JJ” Carrell (49)
Friends from Temecula and San Marcos, Calif.
Previous season: The Amazing Race 20
Colin Guinn (38) and Christie Woods (40)
Life Partners from Austin, Texas
Previous season: The Amazing Race 5
Becca Droz (28) and Floyd Pierce (23)
Friends from Boulder and Highlands Ranch, Colo.
Previous season: The Amazing Race 29
Leo Temory (31) and Jamal Zadran (30)
Cousins from Pasadena, Calif. and Houston, Texas
Previous seasons: The Amazing Race 23 and The Amazing Race: All-Stars
Tyler Oakley (31) and Korey Kuhl (33)
Friends from Los Angeles and San Francisco
Previous season: The Amazing Race 28
Chris Hammons (40) and Bret Labelle (44)
Friends from Moore, Okla. and Dedham, Mass.
Previous season: Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X
Corinne Kaplan (39) and Eliza Orlins (35)
Friends from Denver, Colo. and New York
Previous seasons: Survivor: Gabon and Survivor: Caramoan (Corinne); Survivor: Vanuatu and Survivor: Micronesia (Eliza)
Rupert (54) and Laura (49) Boneham
Married from Indianapolis, Ind.
Previous seasons: Survivor: Pearl Islands, Survivor: All-Stars, Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, and Survivor: Blood vs. Water (Rupert); Survivor: Blood vs. Water (Laura)
Janelle Pierzina (38) and Britney Haynes (30)
Friends from Lakeville, Minn. and Tulsa, Okla.
Previous seasons: Big Brother 6, Big Brother All-Stars and Big Brother 14 (Janelle); Big Brother 12 and Big Brother 14 (Britney)
Rachel Reilly (34) and Elissa Slater (32)
Sisters from Van Nuys, Calif. and Las Vegas, Nev.
Previous Seasons: Big Brother 12, winner Big Brother 13, The Amazing Race 20 and The Amazing Race: All-Stars (Rachel); Big Brother 15 (Elissa)
Nicole Franzel (26) and Victor Arroyo (28)
Dating from Ubly, Mich.
Previous seasons: Big Brother 16, winner of Big Brother 18 (Nicole); Big Brother 18 (Victor) | {
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PANAMÁ CITY, Panamá – New Zealand’s Tim Wilkinson survived windy conditions on Thursday at the Panamá Championship with a 5-under 65 to take the first-round lead. Xinjun Zhang, Mike Weir and Brett Coletta sit T2 at 4-under-par, with four players one stroke behind at T5.
The Web.com Tour kicked off its final event outside the United States on Thursday at the Club de Golf de Panamá, which has historically been one of the most difficult courses on the Web.com Tour as players battled windy conditions with gusts reaching up to 22 miles per hour. Wilkinson, who is making his 190th Web.com Tour start this week, had seven birdies on the day including four on his front nine.
“I would say the putter was working best for me today. Given the conditions and it being really windy out here, I played pretty conservatively,” Wilkinson said. “I hit a lot of solid tee shots and was able to get the ball in play. It was tough because the wind was gusting early and that makes it a little bit more difficult when you pull the trigger.”
After two birdies on Nos. 3 and 4, Wilkinson suffered a double bogey on the par-4 fifth, setting him back to even-par. He quickly bounced back with birdies on Nos. 6 and 8 to make the turn at 2-under and used birdies on 12, 16 and 17 to close out his round, earning him a career low at the Club de Golf de Panamá.
“I hit a lot of greens today and kept it on the safe side of the hole. I putted really well, and I just made one mistake with the double bogey on No. 5,” said Wilkinson. “I came straight back on six and hit a really good four-iron to about eight feet to make birdie there and then had a nice shot into No. 8 and made about a 20-footer. I was able to make some decent-length putts today so that was nice.”
The 40-year-old is seeking his first Web.com Tour victory and has 21 career top-10 finishes, two of which have come at the Panamá Championship.
Sitting one-stroke off the lead is China’s Xinjun Zhang, who fired a 4-under 66 in his first round. Zhang opened Thursday with four birdies in his first five holes followed by 13 consecutive pars.
“I had a lot of good tee shots which set up good opportunities especially with the wind out there,” Zhang said. “I had some pretty long putts for par on the front nine which were critical. Overall, 4-under is really good out there today considering how windy it was.”
Zhang finds himself in a familiar spot near the top of the leaderboard after he led the Country Club de Bogotá Championship last Thursday with an opening-round 61. Zhang was unable to hold on to the lead and eventually finished T34, but said he learned from the experience.
“I want to stay aggressive going into tomorrow,” Zhang said. “I learned from the experience last week and felt like I let my foot off the gas a little bit. I want to stay smart but stay aggressive tomorrow.”
Tied with Zhang is Mike Weir, who is making his second Web.com Tour start this season. Starting on the back nine, the 2003 Masters champion found himself 1-over after his first five holes, but rebounded with birdies on Nos. 16, 18, 4, 8 and 9.
“My ball striking was great today. I hit all but one fairway and all but one green,” said Weir. “I was pin high a lot and had a lot of close chances today. It was really all ball striking out there today.”
Despite being one of the shorter hitters in the field, the 48-year-old mentioned he feels comfortable in the windy conditions at the Club de Golf de Panamá.
“I have a lower ball flight, so I don’t have to change too much,” Weir said. “I think the firm conditions help me because I don’t hit it high but can still get some roll. I’ve always seemed to play well in tougher conditions.”
Joining Weir and Zhang at 4-under is Australian Brett Coletta, who had seven birdies and three bogeys on Thursday. Playing is his first Panamá Championship, Coletta birdied two of his final three holes and feels right at home on the firm and fast Club de Golf de Panamá.
“I just played really solid. I hung in there and had some good birdies at the end,” Coletta said. “Being from Australia we get this common wind and firm surfaces, so it’s not too unfamiliar.”
Four players currently sit 3-under at T5 heading into Friday. | {
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Прокурор будет просить реальных сроков для хабаровских живодерок
Москва. 17 февраля. INTERFAX.RU - Сторона обвинения на суде над хабаровскими живодерками намерена просить для них наказание в виде реального лишения свободы, сообщил агентству "Интерфакс" прокурор отдела управления Генпрокуратуры в Дальневосточном федеральном округе (ДФО) Игорь Острянин.
"Сторона обвинения будет просить соответствующее наказание, исходя из обстоятельств дела и законодательства РФ. Это однозначно длительное лишение свободы", - сказал он, добавив, что гособвинение будет поддержано управлением Генпрокуратуры в ДФО.
Острянин уточнил, что максимальная санкция ст.245 УК РФ (жестокое обращение с животными) - два года лишения свободы. Однако, помимо издевательств над кошками и собаками, девушек обвиняют еще в ряде преступлений, в числе которых есть и тяжкое - разбой. Нападение на человека с оружием наказывается сроком до десяти лет лишения свободы.
"Суд при рассмотрении дела будет учитывать возраст девушек (на момент совершения преступлений обеим не было 18 лет - ИФ), условия их жизни и воспитания, а также их отношение к содеянному", - добавил Острянин.
Он сообщил, что фигуранткам было вручено обвинительное заключение, дело направлено в суд. Острянин также добавил, что в начале февраля суд продлил меру пресечения обеим девушкам - они останутся под стражей до 19 марта.
Как сообщалось ранее, девушки обвиняются в жестоком обращении с животными (ч.2 ст.245 УК РФ), в разбое (ч.2 ст.162 УК РФ), оскорблении чувств верующих (ч.1 ст.148 УК РФ), возбуждении ненависти либо вражды (ч.2 ст.282 УК РФ). Они полностью признали свою вину и раскаялись.
По версии следствия, две несовершеннолетние фигурантки дела летом 2016 года в Хабаровске издевались над животными и убивали их. Их жертвами стали птицы, кошки и собаки, всего не менее 15 представителей животного мира.
Помимо этого, одна из девушек неоднократно публиковала в соцсети изображения и тексты, оскорбляющие религиозные чувства верующих. Совместно со своим ровесником она также сняла и опубликовала в интернете видео со сценами унижения достоинства молодого человека по признаку принадлежности к социальной группе.
Кроме того, по данным сделствия, девушки с оружием напали на жителя Хабаровска и отобрали у него деньги. | {
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Spoiler, click me
PHOENIX, AZ - August 15 - Space Wars: Interstellar Empires, a turn-based tactical strategy MMO from publisher ToHeroes and developer Desert Owl Games, will take off for Early Access on Linux in December 2016. PAX West attendees will be the first to experienceSpace Wars' massive interstellar conflicts in booth 2323.
Players start by siding with one of four races battling to control the galaxy, then select and command an advanced spacecraft to help conquer the cosmos one planet at a time. Even with dominant forces, tense battles for control of the entire universe can rage on for months. Each race has 26 ships distinct to their species plus different versions of the base spacecraft, totaling more than 100 variants of spaceships.
Experience is earned through missions, battles and conquering regions. Experience points can unlock a captain's skills as well as upgrade various officers' talents. How players manage their ship's power upgrades is a key mechanic; prioritizing Propulsion, Sensors, Force Fields or Weapons will provide distinct advantages in the conflicts to come.
Environment plays a significant role in the success or failure of the faction. Asteroids can hide advancing fleets, Ion Storms will disable shields and many other locations can turn the tide of battle. Captains must pay heed to the galaxy around them to capitalize on their surroundings and avoid being caught off guard.
Space Wars follows an epic conflict in the year 2190 between four races: Sol Imperial Worlds, Genari United Empires, Ma'Alaketh Confederation and The Hive. Each race's playstyle calls for distinct strategies. No group is inherently evil, but all strive for more power to ensure the survival of their species.
"Space Wars is the balance of individual strategy, tactical positioning and large-scale social play I haven't found in any other game," said Robert Simyar, CEO, ToHeroes. "After several years of conceptual work, we are nearly ready to bring the universe in our dreams to life." | {
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Page teased Maple Leaf Rag at the end of Gumbo. The Vibration of Life was announced by Trey as “Written by God” and was performed for the first time since November 30, 1994 (148 shows). At the end of Axilla, the light crew also received a bizarre tribute and Leigh Fordham, a member of Phish's light crew, was mentioned several times. The Hood lyrics were subsequently altered slightly to include a bit about Leigh Fordham. Suzy Greenberg included Leigh Fordham references as well as La Grange and Axilla teases. We’re An American Band made its Phish debut in the city referenced in its lyrics. | {
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In love with a Rare mare
Starlight did say that nothing can simply "disappear", implying that magic cannot simply cause mass to cease existing. This implies that the mass has to go somewhere. What it is turned into is then up for debate. When MeanLucario says "a lighter element" I presume that they mean some type of gas. It is possible that the excess mass is converted into something like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, or nitrogen (or a combination thereof) which would simply become part of the atmosphere. This would probably cause problems in our world, but in Equestria, where pegasi are in charge of controlling the weather, they may have a process by which they can balance out the air elements. (This would also explain the high difficulty of a transmutation spell, as the unicorn in question not only has to change the object's shape, size, mass, etc., but also be able to convert the excess mass into lighter gasses in an instant.)Furthermore, if my above theory is accurate, what Trixie did in the "Teacup Scene" is extremely dangerous, as converting so much excess mass at once could drastically change the air pressure of the room, which could cause difficulty in a pony being able to breathe. (The pressurized air may force itself into the ponies' lungs, or vice-versa, where the air would not be able to be exhaled, due to the pressures.) | {
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Russia’s top human rights official has said the country’s decision to decriminalise domestic violence in 2017 was a “mistake”.
The country’s parliament adopted controversial legislative amendments in February last year that decriminalised battery offences of family members. This marked a grave setback which reduced penalties for abusers and placed victims in even more danger.
Human rights activists say domestic violence complaints have skyrocketed and abusers have been given a sense of impunity since Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the law.
On Monday, human rights ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova told a conference: “I believe that decriminalisation was a mistake and we need to adopt a law to combat domestic abuse.”
She spoke in favour of decriminalising some forms of domestic abuse in 2017 – arguing that imprisoning men who had just been “mildly abusive” could leave households without breadwinners and potentially create more harm than good.
The amendments meant violence against a spouse or child that caused bruising or bleeding but not broken bones became punishable by 15 days in jail or a fine of 30,000 rubles (£350) as long as it did not take place more than once a year.
Offences previously had a maximum jail sentence of two years.
But Ms Moskalkova appears to have performed a U-turn after witnessing the impact the law has had on women, children and elderly people – with domestic abuse appearing to have risen after the amendment was passed.
“Today, a person who is in the family space is not protected from family members who do harm unto them without it being considered a crime,” she was cited as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 11 August 2020 French Prime Minister Jean Castex is helped by a member of staff to put a protective suit on prior to his visit at the CHU hospital in Montpellier AFP via Getty World news in pictures 10 August 2020 Locals harvest their potatoes as Mount Sinabung spews volcanic ash in Karo, North Sumatra province, Indonesia Antara Foto/Reuters World news in pictures 9 August 2020 Doves fly over the Peace Statue at Nagasaki Peace Park during the memorial ceremony held for the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing EPA World news in pictures 8 August 2020 Anti-government protesters try to remove concrete wall that installed by security forces to prevent protesters reaching the Parliament square, during a protest against the political elites and the government after this week's deadly explosion in Beirut AP World news in pictures 7 August 2020 A protester throws a stone towards Israeli forces in the village of Turmus Aya, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, following a march by Palestinians against the building of Israeli settlements AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 August 2020 A woman yells as soldiers block a road for French President Emmanuel Macron's visit the Gemmayzeh neighborhood. The area in Beirut suffered extensive damage from the explosion at the seaport AP World news in pictures 5 August 2020 Damage at the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon Reuters World news in pictures 4 August 2020 A large explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut. The blast, which rattled entire buildings and broke glass, was felt in several parts of the city AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 August 2020 A general view shows the new road bridge in Genoa, Italy ahead of its official inauguration, after it was rebuilt following its collapse on August 14, 2018 which killed 43 people Reuters World news in pictures 2 August 2020 Empty stall spaces are seen hours before a citywide curfew is introduced in Melbourne, Australia EPA World news in pictures 1 August 2020 People take part in a demonstration by the initiative "Querdenken-711" with the slogan "the end of the pandemic - the day of freedom" to protest against the current measurements to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Berlin, Germany AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 July 2020 Pilgrims circumambulating around the Kaaba, the holiest shrine in the Grand mosque in Mecca. Muslim pilgrims converged today on Saudi Arabia's Mount Arafat for the climax of this year's hajj, the smallest in modern times and a sharp contrast to the massive crowds of previous years Saudi Ministry of Media/AFP World news in pictures 30 July 2020 The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission lifts off at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The mission is part of the USA's largest moon to Mars exploration. Nasa will attempt to establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through their Artemis programme EPA World news in pictures 29 July 2020 A woman refreshes herself in a outdoor pool in summer temperatures in Ehingen, Germany dpa via AP World news in pictures 28 July 2020 Malaysia's former prime minister Najib Razak speaks to the media after he was found guilty in his corruption trial in Kuala Lumpur AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 July 2020 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses for a photograph after conferring commemorative pistols to leading commanding officers of the armed forces on the 67th anniversary of the "Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War". Which marks the signing of the Korean War armistice KCNA via Reuters
Although Ms Moskalkova is a Russian official, she is not able to push for policy change herself.
The law was controversial in local media but it was passed almost unanimously in the socially conservative legislature. Only three of 380 lawmakers voted against it.
It was justified on the basis that parents should not be punished more stringently for disciplining their own children than strangers who attack minors.
Russia is one of the only major countries in the world not to have dedicated laws for domestic violence. The country is one of only two Council of Europe members that have neither signed nor ratified its Istanbul Convention, which prevents and combats domestic violence and violence against women.
Women's Aid release advert showcasing extent of domestic violence
Russian police are refusing to register or investigate women’s reports of domestic violence and are instead advising them to reconcile with abusive partners, a damning report by Human Rights Watch report found in October.
The research found that serious gaps in Russia’s laws, a dearth of protection orders, and inadequate police and judicial responses mean even women who are faced with severe physical violence have meagre or zero protection.
The study – titled “I Could Kill You and No One Would Stop Me”: Weak State Response to Domestic Violence in Russia – said social stigma, lack of awareness and lack of trust in police resulted in victims not reporting abuse.
It also found domestic violence in the country is still predominantly viewed as a private, “family” matter – with police, courts and sometimes even service providers attributing blame to the victims and advising women to avoid “provoking” their abusers.
Women described being choked, punched, beaten with wooden sticks and metal rods, burnt, threatened with weapons, sexually assaulted and raped, pushed from balconies and windows, having their teeth knocked out, and being forced to endure severe psychological abuse.
Domestic violence is a massive problem in the country – with official studies suggesting at least one out of five women in Russia have experienced physical violence at the hands of a husband or partner. | {
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Since Hurricane Sandy, the historic Belle Harbor Yacht Club in the Rockaways—one of New York City’s hardest-hit neighborhoods—has become an indispensable hub for supplies, volunteers, and a much-needed round of drinks. Three weeks after the storm, the oft-maligned Long Island Power Authority still hasn’t re-connected this building, not to mention its neighbors, back to the grid, leaving locals to face the prospect of a cold, dark Thanksgiving.
But outside, the sun is shining, and a trio of local solar power companies have seen an opportunity to bridge the gap left open by the electric utility. The yacht club, among several area buildings, is now plugged into a portable solar power generator, which frees volunteers from the endless gas lines that plague those dependent on traditional generators and leaves them ready to dish out hot plates of turkey and stuffing to the beleaguered community. | {
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One of the ironies of the Daily Mail's smearing of Ralph Miliband - "the man who hated Britain" - is how vulnerable the paper, with its loathing of multiculturalism, the BBC, the welfare state and immigration, is to the same charge. On his LBC phone-in this morning, Nick Clegg became the first politician to make this point, and did so brilliantly.
He said:
My honest reaction was that when I heard the Daily Mail accusing someone of saying that they did not like Britain, I'm not a regular reader of this newspaper but every time I do open it, it just seems to be overflowing with bile about modern Britain. They don't like working mothers, they don't like the BBC, they don't like members of the royal family, they don't like teachers, they don't like the English football team. The list goes on. So talk about kettles and pots ... It seems to me that if anyone excels in denigrating and often vilifying a lot about modern Britain, it's the Daily Mail.
The Lib Dem leader and the Mail have, of course, never seen eye-to-eye. At the height of Cleggmania, the paper ran a memorable hit-piece accusing him of a "Nazi slur on Britain".
The smear was based on a 2002 Guardian piece written by Clegg in which he wrote: "All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.
"A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place."
In the case of Ralph Miliband, the paper similarly misrepresented his words, in this instance an adolescent diary entry, to claim that he hated Britain (the similarity between his and Clegg's observations is striking). As a 17-year-old Jewish refugee, Miliband wrote: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world…You sometimes want them almost to lose [the war] to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent. To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation."
The earlier Clegg affair is a reminder that the paper has form in this area and that its past support for fascism has never restrained it from lecturing others. | {
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News from Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 1, 2017
New York City Press Office / 212-416-8060
Albany Press Office / 518-776-2427
[email protected]
Twitter: @AGSchneiderman
A.G. SCHNEIDERMAN ANNOUNCES LAWSUIT AGAINST SPECTRUM-TIME WARNER CABLE AND CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS FOR ALLEGEDLY DEFRAUDING NEW YORKERS OVER INTERNET SPEEDS AND PERFORMANCE
Complaint Alleges Nation’s Second-Largest Internet Service Provider Systematically And Knowingly Failed To Deliver The Reliable And Fast Internet Access It Promised To Subscribers Across The State
Suit Seeks To Compensate Spectrum-Time Warner Cable Subscribers For Five Years Of Broken Promises And Damages And Restitution That Could Be Worth Upwards Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars
Click Here To Read The Full Complaint Filed In NY State Supreme Court
NEW YORK – Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a lawsuit against Charter Communications Inc. (“Charter”) and its subsidiary Spectrum Management Holdings, LLC, (f/k/a Time Warner Cable, Inc.,) (together, “Spectrum-TWC”) for allegedly conducting a deliberate scheme to defraud and mislead New Yorkers by promising internet service that they knew they could not deliver.
The complaint alleges that since January 2012 Spectrum-TWC’s marketing promised subscribers who signed up for its Internet service that they would get a "fast, reliable connection" to the Internet from anywhere in their home. But a 16-month investigation by the Attorney General’s office – which included reviewing internal corporate communications and hundreds of thousands of subscriber speed tests – found Spectrum-Time Warner subscribers were getting dramatically short-changed on both speed and reliability.
The suit alleges that subscribers’ wired internet speeds for the premium plan (100, 200, and 300 Mbps) were up to 70 percent slower than promised; WiFi speeds were even slower, with some subscribers getting speeds that were more than 80 percent slower than what they had paid for. As alleged in the complaint, Spectrum-TWC charged New Yorkers as much as $109.99 per month for premium plans could not achieve speeds promised in their slower plans.
“The allegations in today’s lawsuit confirm what millions of New Yorkers have long suspected -- Spectrum-Time Warner Cable has been ripping you off,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Today’s action seeks to bring much-needed relief to the millions of New Yorkers we allege have been getting cheated by Spectrum-Time Warner Cable for far too long. Even now, Spectrum-Time Warner Cable continues to offer Internet speeds that we found they cannot reliably deliver.”
The AG’s investigation also found that Spectrum-TWC executives knew that the company’s hardware and network were incapable of achieving the speeds promised to subscribers, but nevertheless continued to make false representations about speed and reliability. The investigation further revealed that while Spectrum-TWC earned billions of dollars in profits from selling its high-margin Internet service to millions of New York subscribers, it repeatedly declined to make capital investments necessary to improve its network or provide subscribers with the necessary hardware.
As the complaint alleges, Spectrum-TWC continues to underserve their subscribers by failing to make the capital investments necessary to live up to their promised speeds. These investments would include substantially upgrading Spectrum-TWC’s network capability and replacing large numbers of deficient modems and wireless routers that subscribers currently pay Spectrum-TWC up to $10 per month to rent.
Spectrum-Time Warner Cable currently has approximately 2.5 million subscribers across New York State.
The complaint specifically alleges a series of false and misleading practices by the company over the course of several years, including:
Spectrum-TWC Misled Subscribers By Falsely Promising Speeds It Knew It Would Not Deliver
The complaint alleges that since at least 2012, Spectrum-TWC represented to its New York subscribers that they could get fast and reliable Internet access. However, the company knew that these promises were impossible to keep for several reasons. First, Spectrum-TWC leased deficient modem equipment to subscribers that could not deliver the promised speeds. Second, in addition to the equipment failures, Spectrum-TWC’s network was overloaded and could not consistently deliver the speeds it promised to subscribers. That was because Spectrum-TWC did not design the network to reliably deliver the promised speeds. Moreover, the complaint alleges that Spectrum-TWC decided to cut costs by not fixing the equipment and network failures. To mask its misconduct, the complaint alleges that Spectrum-TWC rigged test results.
For example:
During the Relevant Period, Spectrum-TWC leased deficient cable modems to over 900,000 subscribers in New York that could not deliver the advertised speeds. As of February 2016, Spectrum-TWC still charged over 185,000 New Yorkers, or roughly 7% of its 2.5 million active subscriber base at the time, $10 a month for deficient modems that, in its own words, were “not capable of supporting the service levels paid for.”
The results of numerous tests from multiple Internet speed measurements confirm that Spectrum-TWC delivered to subscribers on Spectrum-TWC’s fastest speed plans only a third to a half of the download speeds—sometimes even less—than they had paid for.
Spectrum-TWC Misled Subscribers By Promising Wireless Connectivity That It Knew It Would Not Deliver
The complaint alleges that since at least 2012, Spectrum-TWC promised its subscribers go-anywhere wireless connectivity in their homes. However, the company knew that the wireless routers provided to subscribers could not deliver the promised speeds or service.
For example:
As of February 2016, Spectrum-TWC supplied over 250,000 subscribers on 200 Mbps and 300 Mbps plans deficient WiFi routers that Spectrum-TWC knew could not deliver speeds above 100 Mbps.
Separately, Spectrum-TWC ignored its own engineers and promised subscribers a home WiFi experience that was beyond the technical limits of its equipment and WiFi technology.
Spectrum-TWC Misled Subscribers By Promising Fast, Reliable Access to Online Content That It Knew It Would Not Deliver
The complaint alleges that since at least 2012, Spectrum-TWC represented to their subscribers that they would get fast, reliable access to content online like Netflix and gaming. However, Spectrum-TWC knew that it could not deliver on this promise because of the state of interconnection points in the transmission of online content. Specifically, the company was aware of, and sometimes deliberately created, bottlenecks at interconnection points, which resulted in slowdowns and disruptions to subscribers’ service.
For example:
Spectrum-TWC knew that bottlenecks in its network would result in many subscribers routinely experiencing the very hallmarks of a poor Internet connection—slowdowns, lag time, buffering and interruptions, yet its marketing specifically promised that they would avoid when streaming videos, playing online games and accessing other online content.
But these executives traded on the fact that most subscribers had a limited choice of Internet service providers and that the technical complexity of deducing the problems would make it difficult for subscribers to pin the blame on the company.
The New York-based cable operator, originally known as Time Warner Cable, is currently rebranding itself as “Spectrum” throughout the state. Spectrum-TWC provides Internet service to approximately 2.5 million households/subscribers in New York State, and the complaint covers the subscription plans of almost 5 million subscribers over the relevant period.
In its filing, the New York Attorney General’s Office is seeking restitution for New York consumers as well as appropriate injunctive and equitable relief to end Spectrum-TWC’s longstanding deceptive practices.
This investigation was handled by Bureau of Internet and Technology Bureau Chief Kathleen McGee, Consumer Fraud Bureau Chief Jane Azia, Executive Agency Counsels Simon Brandler, David Nachman and Laura Wood, Assistant Attorneys General Aaron Chase and Mihir Kshirsagar of the Bureau of Internet and Technology, and Assistant Attorney General Kate Matuschak and counsel Alex Goldman of the Consumer Frauds Bureau, with assistance from Director of Research & Analytics Lacey Keller and Analyst Lucas Chizzali. The Bureaus of Internet and Technology and Consumer Frauds are overseen by Executive Deputy Attorney General for Economic Justice Manisha M. Sheth.
Columbia law professor Tim Wu served as a consultant to the Office of the Attorney General in connection with this matter. | {
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Participation in S-Comm, which Trump has vowed to re-up in its original form, was instrumental in securing the record-setting 2.5 million deportations carried out during the first six years of Obama’s tenure, leading some advocates to dub the president “Deporter in Chief.”
Under S-Comm, ICE regularly asked for detainers on immigrants regardless of how minor their alleged crime, a problem that the Department of Homeland Security sought to improve upon by saying that those considered a threat to national security should be the priority. Otherwise, under PEP, the extraction program has remained the same; ICE has merely added the option of having the jail inform the agency when a person will be released instead of continuing to hold them in the jail.
In practice, that has generally meant refusing to cooperate with ICE detainer requests made under an Obama-era program called Secure Communities, or S-Comm, and its progeny, the newly named but largely unchanged Priority Enforcement Program. Under S-Comm, fingerprints collected by local jailers are shared via the FBI database with immigration authorities. If ICE gets a hit on a person thought to be in the country illegally, it issues a detainer request to the local jail, asking that the city or county hold the individual — even beyond the person’s term of incarceration or after a person has made bail — until ICE can come to pick them up.
Although there is no legal definition of what a sanctuary city is, the term is colloquially bestowed on cities or counties that have policies limiting or refusing local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities.
Hernandez’s campaign promise put Austin on a trajectory to become the state’s first official so-called sanctuary city, a move praised by residents, activists, and city officials alike — that has also put the city, along with hundreds of other jurisdictions like it across the country, on a collision course with the Trump administration. Trump has vowed to undertake mass deportation of immigrants and to withhold millions in federal funds from jurisdictions that would try to stand in his way. “Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities,” he said, “will not receive taxpayer dollars.”
Hernandez ran on a platform that included ending the county’s commitment to honor “detainer” requests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Such requests ask that the county hold for ICE pick-up anyone booked into the county jail that the feds suspect might be in the country illegally.
In particular, the officials — including the city’s mayor, several city council members, and the newly elected district attorney and sheriff — sought to quell the concerns of the city’s sizable immigrant population, given the nasty, xenophobic rhetoric espoused by Trump and his surrogates. “My message,” said council member Greg Casar, “to the people who fear, justifiably, in their hearts what is to come, is that before they come for you, they have to come through me.”
A decidedly despondent contingent of city and county elected officials gathered at city hall in Austin, Texas, on November 17 for a press conference designed to address residents’ “safety concerns” following the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.
Under Greg Hamilton, the outgoing Democratic sheriff of Travis County, Texas, where Austin is located, the city ranked third in the nation for the rate of deportations initiated under S-Comm, a fact that enraged advocates, residents, and some local officials. In 2014, the city, which has no control over the sheriff or operations at the county jail, passed a resolution denouncing the program and imploring the sheriff to discontinue his office’s participation in it. Hamilton refused — repeatedly saying he had no choice but to participate — and his recalcitrance almost certainly influenced voters’ choice of Hernandez from a wide field of primary candidates aiming to replace him.
Hamilton was not the only veteran sheriff ousted from office this month by Texas voters frustrated in part by hardline positions on immigration and a too cozy relationship with ICE. In San Antonio, police Sgt. Javier Salazar, who boasted of his role in crafting a department policy that forbids officers from inquiring about immigration status, defeated Republican incumbent Sheriff Susan Pamerleau, whose position was that current immigration enforcement isn’t punitive enough. “My issue is, when they commit a crime, there’s not a law today that requires that they be removed from the United States,” she said. (Notably, however, Salazar has said he would follow PEP.)
And in Harris County, where Houston is located, Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez campaigned in part on ending his county’s participation in an even more insidious ICE program known as 287(g). Under that strategy, local law enforcement officers are actually deputized by the federal agency, and instead of merely granting a detainer request are tasked with ferreting out the immigration status of those in their custody. “I hope that we could move away from regressive type of policies that are impactful, especially to one large segment of the community, which is the Latino community in this case,” he said. Gonzalez said that he has concerns about the program violating due process rights, putting a strain on community relations, and encouraging racial profiling.
Indeed, it’s not only S-Comm that Trump wants to bring back to life, but he is also a fan of the 287(g) program, which he has called a “popular” program that he would like to “expand and revitalize.” At it appears that is among the proposals that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach took with him to his meeting with Trump, who has tagged Kobach as a potential head of DHS. In a photo of Kobach taken November 20, the anti-immigrant zealot had in his hand a paper titled as his “strategic plan” for Trump’s first year in office, which includes deporting a “record number of criminal aliens” — in part, it seems, by increasing the reach of the 287(g) program to include “at least 70 cities and counties.”
At present, there are just 32 jurisdictions involved in 287(g) partnerships with ICE — all of them based in jail operations. But there’s no reason to think that a “revitalized” 287(g) program would be limited to operations behind bars. Instead, it would likely make it back out onto the streets — as a “task force” partnership — where beat cops are imbued with immigration enforcement power. Those partnerships were scrapped in 2012, following allegations that they encouraged racial profiling and inflamed distrust between police and the communities they serve. The misuse of the 287(g) is one of the legacies of the infamous and recently ousted sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio.
In all, advocates and experts are concerned by Trump’s apparent dedication to amplifying immigration programs that have been fraught with abuse. “Outsourcing federal immigration enforcement to localities is expensive in terms of costs to local communities, but also in terms of community safety and trust,” Michele Waslin, senior research and policy analyst for the American Immigration Council wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Given the evidence of racial profiling and civil rights violations, and the harm to community relations and community safety that 287(g) can create, we feel that going back to [that] program and [to] Secure Communities would be incredibly harmful to local communities and would invite civil rights abuses.”
Not only are the programs abusive, but in the case of S-Comm, unconstitutional — according to a string of recent court cases in which judges have found that the unlawful detention of a person absent probable cause is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
That fact, in turn, may make it difficult for a Trump administration to attack so-called sanctuary cities by threatening to withhold federal funding. “You can’t coerce [someone] through federal funding to do something that is unconstitutional,” said Lena Graber, special projects attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
That defect may also impact states that align themselves with Trump’s thinking and pass — or attempt to pass — laws that would punish cities or counties that uphold their community values by adopting sanctuary city policies. Texas lawmakers, for example, have tried multiple times to pass just such a law. This year, the governor and lieutenant governor have made its passage a priority, and activists are gearing up for what they believe will be a tough legislative session. “I think we’re in for a real fight this year,” said Bob Libal, executive director of the activist group Grassroots Leadership. “If there’s anything this election shows us it’s that you can get elected by appealing to the worst in people when it comes to immigration — the worst.”
But simply endorsing the flawed federal program at the state level does not cure its constitutional defects, says Jonathan Blazer, advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU. “If there are Fourth Amendment constitutional problems with ICE’s use of detainers, or the actions that localities take in response to detainers, it does nothing to fix those constitutional problems for [states like Texas] to mandate that localities honor all detainers, constitutional or not,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept. “In fact, it serves to exacerbate the incidence of constitutional violation, and make the state susceptible itself to challenges that had previously been focused on ICE and localities.”
But even if the program did pass constitutional muster, it still might be tough for a Trump administration to use money to punish cities like Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Santa Fe, New Mexico, New York City, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Seattle — among others — by threatening to withhold funding. In general, the concept of federalism (or “states’ rights” as many a Republican politician reiterated ad nauseam during Obama’s two terms) bars the feds from commandeering local governments to carry out federal policies. The “current threats, to ‘defund’ jurisdictions for not wanting to expend local law enforcement resources to carry out federal immigration enforcement, run directly into the core constitutional value of federalism,” Cody Wofsy, Immigrants’ Rights Project attorney at the ACLU, wrote in an email.
Even if Trump’s plan didn’t violate the principle of federalism, it still might be a tough legal pull. Though federal programs often come with strings attached, the Supreme Court has said that those strings can’t be so onerous that they could be considered coercive. And where the government seeks uniformity in policy among the states and threatens to withhold funding as a means to achieve it, it must also demonstrate that the funding it chooses to withhold is reasonably related to the problematic policy. So the federal government could potentially seek to withhold policing-related funds from a sanctuary city, for example, but restricting access to broader pots of money, say Community Development Block Grants, likely would not work.
“Trump can’t with the stroke of a pen end sanctuary cities or cut off funding to cities and states that he believes have sanctuary policies,” the ACLU’s Blazer said in an email. “There are a number of programs that fund cities and states and each of these programs has their own rules, regulations, contracts. Trump can’t just decide to flip a funding switch off, to penalize cities and states that are doing nothing wrong and for which no authority to penalize exists.”
Indeed, even the National Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Trump, has said that threatening to withhold law enforcement-related funds from cities that refuse to retreat from their sanctuary policies is ill-advised. “We do not support the withholding of public safety funds as a hammer,” said James Pasco, the police union’s executive director. “You can’t hold people’s safety over their heads to get them to come to your point of view.” | {
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Thorgy Thor’s tour across America with her fellow RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants was going great—up until the night she hurt her back so badly she could barely move. Luckily, one of her sisters happened to have a few pills on hand that made the pain go away, and after popping about eight of them, Thorgy wound up feeling good enough to go ahead and take the stage. | {
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While sharp overnight increases in the cost of prescription drugs have recently dominated headlines, critics say another pharmaceutical industry practice that has added billions of dollars to the price that consumers pay for their medicines continues unabated.
Known as "reverse settlement payments," or "pay-to-delay" deals, the financial arrangements are a unique but common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Essentially, they allow drug manufacturers in some instances to pay competitors not to manufacture generic versions of their products, thereby ensuring that they maintain patent protection for as long as possible.
While recent steep increases in the price of prescription drugs after their production rights were acquired by new manufacturers were met with howls of outrage, critics say that reverse settlements have drawn little scrutiny.
Regulators and courts are struggling to figure out when the agreements cross the murky legal line laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago. But in the meantime, the deals have cost consumers billions of dollars over the past 22 years, according to a 2009 study of the practice.
"In most industries, if you paid somebody to stay out of your market or you entered into an agreement to stay out of the market, that's a straightforward antitrust violation," says Lisl Dunlop, a partner and antitrust specialist at the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm.
But with drug law, it's far more complicated because of the Hatch-Waxman Act, a landmark food and drug policy legislation signed into law in 1984.
To lower health care costs for prescription medicines, the bill streamlined the introduction of cheaper generic versions of drugs by removing the requirement that manufacturers of non-branded equivalents conduct their own costly clinical trials. Instead, it required them only to prove that the molecule in the drug is the same as that in the brand-name version.
Related: 'They Put a Price on My Life': Cost of Cystic Fibrosis Drugs is Sky High
By making it much less expensive to produce generic drugs, and including a provision requiring pharmacists to provide customers with generic versions of medications unless a doctor specifically orders otherwise, the law ensured that the pharmaceutical companies would lose virtually their entire market share when drug patents expire after 20 years.
"The brand-name manufacturers face more than just a drop off in demand," says Dunlop. "It's going to be precipitous; they're hardly going to get any money after the patent expires."
But drug makers soon found new ways to extend the patent protection by slightly tweaking the active molecule or delivery mechanism — such as creating an extended-release version of a drug as the patent for an instant-release version was about to expire — so that the product is technically novel while still fundamentally the same. That enabled them to apply for a new patent that would provide them with another 20 years free of competition.
The introduction of tweaked drugs in turn led to a burst of lawsuits by generic drug manufacturers challenging the legitimacy of the new patents and gave birth of a new cottage industry in the legal world.
In reverse-settlement cases, the brand-name manufacturer pays the plaintiff to drop the suit and, in exchange, agree not to make a generic version of the drug for a specified period of time. That means the maker of the original drug continues to be the sole source of the drug until the agreement expires.
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A trade group representing the pharmaceutical industry denies that the agreements mean consumers pay more, saying that the agreements commonly provide for an early end to patent protection and therefor earlier availability of generic versions of drugs than would otherwise be the case.
The deals were generally considered legal until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, said they could violate the law in some circumstances. But the court did not set a clear standard in its ruling in FTC v. Actavis, leaving state and federal courts to sort through the legal arguments.
Related: An 'Utterly Broken' Drug Market: The High Cost of Surviving Cancer
Since then, state and federal courts have variously interpreted the ruling, generally focusing on whether the offer made by the brand-name maker was so large that it reflected an understanding that it was likely to lose the generic maker's claims that the secondary patent was invalid.
The amount that changes hands in such agreements can be staggering.
For example, the drug maker Cephalon agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission on June 17 over allegations that it had paid four generic manufacturers $300 million to delay introducing off-brand —and much cheaper — versions of its popular drug Provigil, used to treat sleep disorders and frequently prescribed off-label as a stimulant. Cephalon, now owned by Teva, acknowledged no wrongdoing in the settlement and did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
The deal, which the FTC labeled an "anticompetitive scheme," enabled Cephalon to protect its profits from Provigil, which costs about $3,000 for a three-month supply vs. $1,800 for the generic equivalent, modafinil, and provided the generic makers with enough money to walk away.
"The people who lose out are the consumers who pay the higher prices. We’re agreeing to put the costs on someone who isn’t in the room.”
To give an idea of what those individual payments can add up to, the FTC settlement required Cephalon to forfeit $1.2 billion in profits.
"There's always that disconnect," says Mark Lemley, a professor of law at Stanford who represented plaintiffs in a recent reverse settlement case in California. "And it's why these parties can come to a deal over these payments: 'I stand to make $1 billion if I keep the monopoly, you stand to make only $200 million if you come in and compete with me, and consumers would benefit the rest. But I'll pay you $250 million to just stay out. I still get most of my profit, you get more money than you would have made,' and the people who lose out are the consumers who pay the higher prices. We're agreeing to put the costs on someone who isn't in the room."
Lemley worked for plaintiffs, including patients, pharmacies and insurers, on a case that reached the California Supreme Court in 2012 over a $398 million reverse settlement that Bayer paid generic manufacturer Barr to delay introducing a version of the popular antibiotic ciprofloxacin. In that case, the California Supreme Court ruled that the deal to delay production of a generic for Cipro, a brand-named drug that became a household name in 2001 as a first-line defense against anthrax, violated state antitrust laws and remanded the case back to the trial court. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Bayer settled the lawsuit in 2013 and agreed to pay $74 million to the plaintiffs.
Separately, Barr agreed to drop its patent suit against Bayer, leaving Bayer with the sole rights to Cipro until after the patent expiration.
Related: Company That Raised Drug Prices 5,000% Investigated by New York AG
Bayer and Barr had argued that invalidating these agreements would corrupt the profit incentive of creating new drugs and stifle the patent process. They declined a request from NBC News for comment on the case.
In a statement, PhRMA, the leading drug manufacturer trade group, said patent settlements benefit consumers.
"These settlements generally permit generic drugs on the market earlier than the patent expiration, leading to significant savings for consumers," it said. "Patent settlements do not extend the patent. In fact, historical data shows that the average length of market exclusivity for innovator medicines has decreased. The Supreme Court has provided the Actavis framework for the FTC to review these settlements on a case-by-case basis. And according to the most recent report by the FTC, the number of settlements with potential consideration has declined in recent years."
While the number of these agreements has declined in recent years, it remains at roughly the same level as 2009, said Lemley.
That is the same year that Scott Hemphill, a professor at New York University Law School, conducted the most comprehensive study of reverse settlements, looking at 21 deals from 1993 through 2008 and estimating that they had cost consumers $14 billion. Contacted by NBC News, Hemphill said he could not estimate how that figure has changed since then.
But a 2013 review that Hemphill conducted with Bhaven Samphat, an associate professor in Columbia University’s Health Department, indicated that drug makers are continuing to make relatively small changes to try to extend their patent protection, finding that 89 percent of reverse-settlement cases involve lawsuits over "secondary patents," or a part of the product unrelated to the active ingredient itself.
That, said Lemley, means the cumulative cost to consumers has continued to grow since Hemphill's groundbreaking study.
"It would be fair to estimate that the costs to consumers since 2009 have been even higher than they were before then," he said. "At a minimum, consumers certainly have overpaid for drugs by many billions of dollars as a result of these settlements." | {
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His name is Eminem and he’s now the first artist to receive two RIAA Digital Single Diamond Awards, marking sales and streams of more than 10 million.
Slim Shady picked up the honor for “Not Afraid,” a track from his 2010 album Recovery, to go along with the 11x multi-platinum single “Love the Way You Lie” (featuring Rihanna), from the same release, which has sold 4.5 milion copies in the U.S. and more than 10 million worldwide.
RIAA chairman/ceo Cary Sherman marked the milestone: “We are delighted to recognize Eminem as the first artist to earn two RIAA Digital Diamond Awards. This singular achievement – earning a Diamond Award on two separate digital songs – is unparalleled, and we congratulate him on forever etching a mark in Gold & Platinum Program history.”
In addition to two Diamond song honors, Eminem also has two 10x multi-Platinum Diamond certified albums: 2000’s "The Marshall Mathers LP" and 2002’s "The Eminem Show," both on Aftermath/Interscope. His career RIAA album awards represent more than 37 million sold in the U.S., placing him at No. 44 on the all-time RIAA list of “Top Selling Artists,” just behind Bob Dylan and ahead of Backstreet Boys, while his digital single certifications now surpass the 31 million mark, counting downloads and streams and spanning 10 separate songs, which places him No. 6 on the all-time list, behind Kanye West (31.5m) and ahead of Flo Rida (29.5m). His most recent album, "The Marshall Mathers LP 2," has sold 2.1 million according to Nielsen SoundScan since its November, 2013, release.
Eminem kicks off The Monster Tour with Rihanna this summer at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, August 7 and 8. The jaunt will then continue to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, August 16 and 17 and close the North American portion in his hometown Detroit’s Comerica Park August 22 and 23, before ending up in London’s Wembley Stadium July 11 and 12.
Officially launched in 1958, the RIAA’s Gold & Platinum Program expanded in 1999 to include a Diamond Award honoring U.S. sales of 10 million or more copies of an album or single. The RIAA established its Digital Single Award in 2004 in recognition of the significant sales of emerging digital music formats. Most recently, in 2013, the RIAA added music streams to its Digital Single Award.
The list of more than 110 Diamond titles includes albums and songs by The Beatles, Justin Bieber, Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Kid Rock, Lady Gaga, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Santana, Bruce Springsteen and Usher. | {
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Eruption threat means all 11,000 people of Ambae in the Pacific need to leave – and with sparse official help, they are getting off any way they can
Vanuatu is no stranger to the rumblings, shakings, flood waters and wrecking winds of natural disaster. The south Pacific island nation was rated the most at-risk country in the world in a 2016 United Nations study. Its 83 islands are stuck right in the middle of hurricane alley and they dot the border of the “ring of fire” – a belt around the Pacific prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Despite their precarious situation being a day-to-day reality, the country has been galvanised by the prime minister Charlot Salwai’s order to evacuate the entire island of Ambae because of the threat that the volcano at its centre will blow.
“People’s lives must be our first priority,” Salwai said. “Everybody has to go.”
Play Video 0:23 Smoke billows from Vanuatu's Manaro Voui volcano - video
What followed has been Vanuatu’s own version of the Dunkirk evacuation. Folk began organising even before Salwai gave the order. The Ni-Vanuatu – the people of this archipelago – are defined by two things: land and family. From the moment a state of emergency was announced, members of the Ambae community in Port Vila, the capital, began to mobilise.
They knew better than to wait for the cash-strapped, resource-starved government and instead jury-rigged a disaster response centre at a church. Local companies began donating goods immediately. Before long they had stockpiles of water, food, bedding and other essentials ready to send.
Then they chartered a ship.
The MV Makila was one of the first of Vanuatu’s ragtag fleet of inter-island barges and coasters to reach Ambae with supplies. It unloaded those goods then took more than 100 passengers to safety on the nearby island of Espiritu Santo. Then it went back and did it again.
There was no hesitation, no reflection. The ships had to run. So the community members dug deep and shifted for themselves.
Play Video 0:54 Locals evacuate Ambae island as Vanuatu volcano threatens to erupt – video
On the Indonesian island of Bali, where a volcano is also rumbling threateningly, authorities are dealing with too many people having evacuated: about half of the 140,000 people who have fled to shelters are being told to return home. The situation on Ambae could not be more different: its 11,000 residents are having to be plucked off a handful at a time.
Ambae’s Manaro volcano sits on a small island, in the middle of a lake, on top of Mount Lombenben – whose profile dominates the island. Until last week a calmly smoking patch of earth emitted a gentle column of steam and ash, sometimes shrouding the island. It was this vision of an almost magically disappearing Avalon of the Pacific that led the second world war-era writer James Michener to pen the legend of Bali Ha’i in his Tales of the South Pacific.
But Manaro’s gentle demeanour masked a looming threat. Its gently sloping shape is caused by the earth’s crust bending under unfathomable pressures below the surface. Last week began with a massive show of force as firstly one, then two new vents appeared. The hollow boom of repeated explosions reverberated across the island and the glow of a newly formed lava lake was visible from Pentecost Island, 30km away.
At the weekend the grassroots evacuation effort of Ambae cranked up. Nadia Kanegai has been a personal assistant to a prime minister, and a former political candidate herself. A past master at getting things done by Vanuatu’s often shambolic bureaucracy, she didn’t flinch at the difficulties presented by moving hundreds of her home island’s most vulnerable inhabitants to safety.
She just hired a plane and told the pilot to keep flying until everyone was out.
Kanegai won’t discuss how much this airlift is costing her, but whistle-stop charter flights to the outer islands typically cost the equivalent of £1,000 for a return hop. Her plane made 18 flights on the first day alone.
Moli, 14, has Down syndrome. Safe on the tarmac in Santo island, she spots the camera on her and mugs good-naturedly, flashing a peace sign. But asked how she’s coping, she repeats again and again: “I just want to cry.”
The grassroots airlift has two small 10-seater planes running all day. Nothing bigger can land on the remote island. But it’s not nearly enough. Nancy Garae brought her mother-in-law to Longana airport from Lolovenue in the north-east of the island.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Residents of Ambae are piling into light planes to escape the island, where a volcano threatens to erupt. Photograph: Dan McGarry/Vanuatu Daily Post
“She is nearly 100,” said Garae of the elderly woman. “When we came, we found out the plane was already full. We’re still waiting. Probably tomorrow.” They have nowhere to stay in Longana so they have no choice but to return to the village, then come back the next day.
The exodus from Ambae is ramping up. Ten ships are now involved in the effort, and Australia has announced that the HMAS Choules, a supply ship, is steaming across the Coral Sea to assist.
But for those who cannot travel by ship, or who cannot wait, the people of Ambae must look to themselves.
“These people made me who I am,” Kanegai says. “I’m only paying them back.”
Dan McGarry is media director at the Vanuatu Daily Post
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The Nike Women’s Exclusive Print tight are athletic pants (tights) designed with images of X-ray bones to “show what women are made of” by giving a “glimpse of [their] inner toughness.” They are digitally printed and are available to purchase in black and grey, green and purple or all-nude.
The new Nike Women’s Exclusive Print tight is a performance based pant for the athlete unafraid to make a statement. On the outside, she might be the girl next door, but on the inside, her body has survived grueling workouts, often pushing through pain, broken bones, pulled muscles and harsh tears…
The silhouette is borne from the Nike Pro tight with Dri-FIT and spandex materials, and is meant to withstand the harshest of workouts but is stylish for wearing post boot-camp or out on the town. The tight features a wide, elastic embossed waistband that is slimming and comfortable, and debuts this season in black and grey, green and purple or all-nude. Engineered visible X-Ray bones on both the front and back of the legs will create more than a few double-takes.
They are not to be worn by the timid, the weak or the wallflower. They are for the woman who wants to let people know she’s not just an average girl – she’s an athlete. | {
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The latest Hot Rush Album1. I Live on a Mountain2. Stay3. I'm Not Dead4. Truth is in the Stew5. Dog Without a Face6. Fabulous7. Cold in Hell8. Stayin' Focused9. If You Believe10. Don't Want It Bad11. In My Defense12. Heal Me13. I live by the LakeKenrick Ward - Vocals, Guitar, BassJeremy Hammar - Drums, Guitar, Bass, VocalsDavy Wojcik - Lead GuitarDesmond O'Neill - BassAndy Brack - Drums, BassFreddy Dobler - BassRecorded 2012 Hot Rush Studio | {
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Non c’è carenza di storie composte di immagini e video, di pubblicazioni di vario tipo, che sia su Facebook o su Instagram o qualsiasi altro social network. Ma non mancano anche le storie che vengono bloccate poichè vanno contro l’uso delle linee guida imposte dai social. Per la maggiore, vanno soprattutto quelle che mostrano un po’ più di centimetri di pelle rispetto a quanto sarebbe desiderabile, magari per qualche “Like” in più. Ma questo non significa che sia impossibile trovare contenuti pornografici su Instagram, ad esempio. Basta semplicemente utilizzare i mezzi giusti.
Se ne occupa il sito Daily Dot, che vede nella frutta emoji un modo particolarmente efficace per trovare tali contenuti. Le emoji rappresentative di melanzane, pesche e ciliegie, ad esempio, sarebbero particolarmente efficaci per le ricerche rapide di questo tipo di contenuti. Anche le combinazioni di questo genere di emoji con gli hashtag offrono forme di ricerca efficace.
Nonostante gli sforzi dei moderatori Instagram, però, il controllo verso chi edita questo tipo di contenuti spesso sfugge, e ciò accade più di frequente attraverso le pagine di contenuti specifici che possono essere reperiti anche dagli hashtag di diverse lingue. Questo metodo di condivisione e diffusione di contenuti rende la moderazione delle fotografie particolarmente impegnative. Il che dovrebbe portare Facebook a fare uso di algoritmi sempre più in grado di riconoscere le immagini sui social network e distinguerle da quelle puramente gioviali e di stile, da quelle con un contenuto nascosto e, per questo, non condivisibile. | {
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On May 23, the NFL rolled out its new policy to deal with players kneeling or performing any other form of protest during the national anthem. The policy said that players can stay in the locker room as a protest if they wanted to but if they’re on the field they must or their team will be fined.
When it came to reporting the policy change that evening, ABC and NBC appeared put off by the development. They both seemed to suggest that players kneeling wasn’t unpopular with fans until President Trump spoke out and pushed the inaccurate claim the players weren’t consulted. And neither spoke with players supportive of the decision.
ABC began World New Tonight with the controversial tasing and arrest of an NBA player before getting into the NFL news. “Meantime, the NFL is out tonight with a new policy on the national anthem. Insisting that players on the field must stand for the anthem or that the team will be fined,” announced sensationalist anchor David Muir. “Players taking a knee to protest became a national controversy after President Trump condemned it.”
Reporter Gio Benitez appeared to call into question the timing of the league’s announcement given President Trump’s influence:
The rule change coming two years after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first started kneeling to protest racial inequality and police brutality. President Trump pressuring the league for months. (…) Just days ago, the President praising NASCAR.
“NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calling the unanimous vote by team owners a compromise, but the NFL Players Association says it was not consulted on this change,” Benitez added. But the assertion the players weren’t consulted wasn’t true. The players were allowed input when they spoke with the owners during last fall’s owner's meeting.
Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, they were busy trying to spin the facts behind the NFL’s decision. “Team owners crafted the new rules in a bid to repair PR damage from players kneeling during pregame anthem performances in the name of social justice,” claimed anchor Lester Holt. But he overlooked the fact that kneeling spiked after Trump spoke out, a clear indication it was more about being anti-Trump that the original cause.
“As more players protested, President Trump took sides,” asserted NBC reporter Ann Thompson. “TV ratings fell 10 percent, fans booed players who knelt.” According to her timeline of events, fans really didn’t care about players kneeling before they were compelled by Trump’s lead.
In contrast, CBS Evening News didn’t try to spin the events leading up to the NFL policy change as much as the others and they even played a clip of a player who supported it. “Today, some players, like Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, welcomed the new policy,” noted Jim Axelrod. “I'm glad they came to an agreement, some form or another. I'll be out there standing,” Prescott said.
Disproving the assertions by ABC and NBC that Trump was responsible for the public’s negative attitude, Axelrod recalled how “[a] CBS News poll last September showed a majority of Americans disapproved of kneeling during the anthem.”
The relevant portions of the transcripts are below, click expand to read:
ABC
World News Tonight
May 23, 2018
6:34:31 PM Eastern [2 minutes] DAVID MUIR: Meantime, the NFL is out tonight with a new policy on the national anthem. Insisting that players on the field must stand for the anthem or that the team will be fined. Players taking a knee to protest became a national controversy after President Trump condemned it. Well, tonight, the players say they were not consulted, and at least one team says that if their players kneel, they'll pay for them. Here's ABC's Gio Benitez. [Cuts to video] GIO BENITEZ: Tonight, the NFL addressing the controversy over national anthem protests, announcing a new policy. (…) BENITEZ: Under the new rules, players may stay in the locker room during the star spangled banner. But if they are on the field, they must stand, or the team could face fines. (…) BENITEZ: The rule change coming two years after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first started kneeling to protest racial inequality and police brutality. President Trump pressuring the league for months. (…) BENITEZ: Just days ago, the President praising NASCAR. (…) BENITEZ: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calling the unanimous vote by team owners a compromise, but the NFL Players Association says it was not consulted on this change. [Cuts back to live] MUIR: Gio Benitez live with us tonight. And Gio, as I mentioned, one team chairman saying today that the team will pay for his players if they choose to kneel? BENITEZ: Yeah, that's right, David. We're talking about Chris Johnson, chairman of the jets. He says he's not going to discourage players from taking a knee, he'll pay if he has to. And the player's union says it be challenging this—be ready to challenge this if it needs to, David.
NBC Nightly News
May 23, 2018
7:01:27 PM Eastern [2 minutes 14 seconds] LESTER HOLT: Good evening tonight from Washington and thank you for joining us. There is a big question mark this evening over whether NFL players will stand for the league's new national anthem policy announced today. Team owners crafted the new rules in a bid to repair PR damage from players kneeling during pregame anthem performances in the name of social justice. The policy give players new options to express views and kneeling wasn't one of them. And tonight, the player's union says it wasn't consulted on the new policy. [Cuts to video] ANN THOMPSON: To stand or not to stand, no longer a question in the NFL. Under the amended policy, a player on the field must stand and show respect during the national anthem or his team will be fined. A player can stay off the field without penalty. (…) THOMPSON: A political football, some think the NFL fumbled. (…) THOMPSON: The CEO of New York Jets says he won't punish any players who kneel. In 2016, then 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was one of the first to not stand protesting the treatment of minorities. (…) THOMPSON: As more players protested, President Trump took sides. (…) THOMPSON: TV ratings fell 10 percent, fans booed players who knelt. USA Today columnist Mike Jones says this is a business decision by the owners. (…) THOMPSON: The player's union says the change is under further review. And tonight, one of the protesters, Philadelphia safety, Malcolm Jenkins says, “I will not let it silence me or stop me from fighting.” As the league tries to turn its attention from the flag to the field. Ann Thompson, NBC news, New York. | {
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When HBO set about revealing the official release date for season seven of Game of Thrones by melting a large block of ice, fans eagerly watched on, waiting to see the results.
However, things didn’t quite go as planned as technical difficulties with Facebook Live, along with an extremely lengthy melting time, lead to fans growing very impatient.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Jaime Lannister actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau revealed how the showrunners thought the entire affair was embarrassing as well.
In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Show all 34 1 /34 In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Ramsay Bolton Fed to the hounds by his ex-wife In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Tommen Baratheon Jumped out of a window In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Rickon Stark Shot by Ramsay with an arrow In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Grand Maester Pycelle Stabbed by little birds In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Loras Tyrell Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Alliser Thorne Hung In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Olly Hung #F*ckOlly In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Walder Frey Ticked off the list In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Shaggydog Head cut off In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Summer Ripped apart by White Walkers In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 High Sparrow Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 The Blackfish Killed off-screen… In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Hodor Hold the door… In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Trystane Martell Stabbed through the face by those damned Sand Snakes In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Leaf Blown up saving Bran In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Walda Frey and her little boy Fed to the hounds In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Balon Greyjoy Thrown off a bridge by his brother In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Lady Crane Fell off a chair In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Mace Tyrell Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 The Waif Killed in the dark by Arya Stark In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Lothar Frey and Black Walder Rivers Fray pie In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Brother Lancel Lannister Stabbed once then blown up by Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Lem Lemoncloak Hung by the Brotherhood Without Banners plus The Hound In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Brother Ray Hung by Leomoncloak and his gang In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Three-Eyed Raven Killed by the Night’s King In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Margaery Tyrell Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Khal Rhalko, Khal Brozho, Khal Qorro, Khal Forzho, Khal Moro Burnt by the Mother of Dragons In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Roose Bolton Stabbed in the chest by his own son In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Kevan Lannister Wildfire In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Smalljon Umber Beaten by Tormund In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun That Goddamn Ramsay again In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Osha Throat slit by Ramsay In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Doran Martell Stabbed in the hearth by Ellaria Sand In memoriam: Every major character who died in Game of Thrones season 6 Areo Hotah Stabbed in the spine by Tyene Sand
“I spoke to Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] about that and they were like, “Oh god… That’s embarrassing.” Everyone was like, “What’s going to happen?” “What’s going to happen?!” “It’s melting!” “It crashed!” “Oh my god!” It’s like, just walk away… just walk away. It’s just a date!
“You know, I was actually thinking, “Is there going to be a backlash and people will think, ‘F*ck you guys for that!’” but that’s really happened with every time the show kills off a major character: Never again! F*ck you! I’m never going to watch this show! and, you know, they keep coming back.” | {
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The four major U.S. wireless carriers this week plan to unveil technology to verify users that they say could replace passwords and codes sent by text to mobile phones.
AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. have collaborated on the initiative, dubbed ZenKey, for about two years. The group plans to demonstrate the technology at the Mobile World Conference, which starts Tuesday in Los Angeles.
The idea is for mobile carriers to use SIM card details, location data, phone account type and other characteristics to verify users, Johannes Jaskolski , general manager of the joint venture, the Mobile Authentication Taskforce, told WSJ Pro Cybersecurity in an interview at AT&T’s New Jersey campus.
Companies can use ZenKey in lieu of passwords, or as a second verification factor that is more secure than a text message, he said. Cybersecurity experts have warned that text-based authentication, although widely used, is vulnerable to schemes such as SIM swapping—or persuading a carrier to switch a user’s phone number to another SIM card—which allows fraudsters to intercept messages.
Jack Dorsey , Twitter Inc.’s chief executive, got caught up in such an attack in August when hackers took advantage of a mobile carrier weakness to hijack his Twitter account and post obscene messages.
End users won’t have to pay to use ZenKey and most companies that use the system likely won’t be charged for it, Mr. Jaskolski said. The coalition of four mobile carriers plans to charge companies that make use of additional features, such as being notified about a possible impostor, or obtaining a risk score that details how confident the carriers are of a person’s identity, he said.
The ZenKey technology is similar to single sign-on services developed by cybersecurity and technology companies including Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, said Dan Miller , lead analyst at Opus Research Inc. But ZenKey incorporates additional elements readily known to the telecommunications companies, such as details about an individual’s device. Smartphones are associated with unique device numbers that wireless carriers use to identify phones.
“There are attributes of their customers that can be used for strong authentication that other companies wouldn’t have,” Mr. Miller said. “Phone carriers know a lot about us.”
The initiative follows similar efforts in Europe and Asia, including one by South Korea-based SK Telecom Co.
One challenge, Mr. Miller said, will be persuading banks, retailers and others to sign up over other alternatives and integrate the technology with their own software.
Customers could eventually use ZenKey as an app they download to log onto a banking site or other account by pressing a button instead of entering a username and password.
Fidelity Investments Inc. has experimented with the technology, though a spokesman declined to say whether the company plans to adopt the service.
Bill O’Hern , AT&T’s chief security officer, said the company has tried an earlier version of the technology internally, letting field technicians, for example, sign into apps on their iPads and mobile devices.
Write to Adam Janofsky at [email protected] | {
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As Germany is trying to cope with the latest terrorist attack, a suicide bombing in Ansbach, the possible implications of a previous incident are only starting to form. Numerous media reports in the German media are linking Bitcoin to the Munich shooting which might lead to a further crackdown on cryptocurrency use by European governments.
Apparently the consensus is that the shooter must have illegally acquired the gun on the Darknet and many of the German newspapers that reported it specifically mentioned Bitcoin as the preferred payment method of users on the clandestine network. Needless to say, this is all despite the fact that the investigation is far from over.
While the immediate reactions by German politicians were mainly calls to increase the toughness of the country’s strict anti-gun ownership laws, demands for a clampdown on anonymous online transactions with cryptocurrency can’t be far behind considering that the media is tying it with the rising threat of terrorism. European regulators have already had bitcoin in their sights for a long time, linking it to terror financing, drug trafficking, tax avoidance and other nefarious ventures.
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We last saw this play out following the Paris attacks which led to demands to further curtail anonymity on European cryptocurrency exchanges, despite no evidence that it was related to the event in any way. Now, when bitcoin is seen as the most likely method to have been actually used by a mass murderer for the purchase of a weapon, European authorities will have all the legitimacy and urgency to act against it. | {
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Image copyright AP Image caption The area is prone to landslides and villagers were advised to leave before it hit
Sri Lankan teams searching for scores of people missing after a landslide fear there may be no more survivors.
So far troops have rescued 150 people from the worst-hit site in central Kegalle district, but hopes are fading for another 134 still unaccounted for.
No more people were found overnight, dead or alive - on Wednesday 14 bodies were pulled from the mud.
Five more bodies were found at the site of another mudslide in the district, bringing the death toll there to 10.
Landslides and flooding caused by days of torrential rain have hit many parts of the country, killing at least 43 people in total, according to official figures. Nearly 350,000 people have been displaced.
In the worst-hit area, Aranayake district, three villages were buried after a huge section of hillside sheared away in the rain on Tuesday.
Bad weather is hampering the army's efforts to reach possible survivors.
"I fear the missing 134 could be dead at this point," Maj Gen Sudantha Ranasinghe, the officer in charge, told BBC Sinhala. "But we will continue our operation to recover the bodies to give families some peace."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rescuers' desperation over Sri Lanka mudslide
Risk of further landslides - Azzam Ameen, BBC Sinhala, Aranayake
We started to climb up to the disaster site with troops who were going back on Thursday morning to continue to search for survivors. However they suspended their mission and evacuated the area along with us and some villagers who had returned.
Rain was beating down on the collapsed mountain again, creating a risk of further landslides.
We had to take shelter in a tiny schoolroom on higher ground. Villagers we spoke to were losing hope of finding any more survivors.
We waded through mud and silt to reach the foot of the mountain where most of the devastation has taken place. Army units have identified several places where people may have been buried in the landslide.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC Weather explains the cyclone affecting Sri Lanka
In one of the villages, Pallebage, local resident PG Sekara said: "The army keeps going up the mountain, but they're not going to find anything. To find survivors they will have to dig about 40 feet now."
Prema Adikari said she feared she had lost her brother and his family.
Image caption Prema Adikari (right) came to her brother's village when she heard the news
"My brother's house is completely destroyed. They were inside when the mudslide started. His 15-year-old daughter and his wife were also in the house," she told BBC Sinhala.
"When it rains, the canal waters nearby get so loud - they had not heard the neighbours warning. Only one member of the family remains, my nephew, who had gone to the shops nearby when the landslide struck. At least we want to see their bodies."
At Bulathkohupitiya, the site of the second, smaller landslide in Kegalle district, six people are still reported missing.
Image copyright AP Image caption A huge section of the mountainside broke away, covering villages below
Image copyright AP Image caption Rescuers are using sticks and their bare hands to dig through mud, as bad conditions hamper attempts to bring heavy equipment into the area
Image copyright AP Image caption Residents of other areas are still being evacuated, amid fears of further landslides or flooding
Sri Lanka's monsoon rains often bring floods but officials say these are the worst for several years.
Many displaced people have moved to shelters, and officials have appealed for water, dry food rations and sanitary items. Low-lying coastal areas have also been hit.
In southern India the authorities are on alert as the rains move up the country's east coast.
At least 280 people died in a month of heavy rains and floods in the city of Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu state last year. The rains, the heaviest there in a century, were blamed on climate change although city officials were also criticised for being unprepared.
Other parts of India have been suffering a severe drought in recent weeks. | {
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I have been deeply troubled by the unnecessary confrontations over the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. I grew up in Mandan and have a home in Bismarck. I hauled coal, oil, goods, etc. for over 30 years as a railroad worker. The truth is, North Dakota doesn't need this pipeline.
The pipeline itself is unnecessary because we have ample rail capacity to haul all of North Dakota's crude oil safely by rail with newer and safer rail cars. We are currently only shipping 3-4 oil trains a day out of North Dakota and we have the capacity to ship 100 trains a day with our state's 21 oil train loading facilities.
Over the past five years those loading facilities were built costing hundreds of millions of dollars and during the same time the BNSF railroad invested more than $1 billion in North Dakota's track infrastructure to haul all this crude oil. So building the pipeline means hundreds of millions of dollars in stranded assets and lost opportunities for our state.
Building this pipeline adversely affects North Dakotans too. We have more than 200 railroad workers who are currently furloughed who would be put back to work if we shipped more oil by rail. While I support union construction workers who build pipelines, the truth is, most of these folks are from out of state, and this pipeline creates some jobs for a few months.
North Dakota railroad workers live here and shipping oil by rail will keep them employed for decades. Shipping oil by rail doesn't just benefit rail workers and our state's railroads, revenues from shipping oil helps pay for the maintenance of our entire rail system and that benefits other shippers like farmers who depend on good rail lines to get their crops to market. The Dakota Access Pipeline...well it will ship oil.
There are some that make the unsubstantiated claim that shipping oil by pipeline is safer than by rail. However you ship oil, there will be leaks and extensive clean-up projects - that's an unfortunate reality.
But if a train does derail, it's almost always easily cleaned up compared to an underground pipeline leak. Besides new tank cars that are stronger and less likely to rupture and catch fire in a derailment, North Dakota has implemented new oil volatility rules that reduce the flammability of today's crude oil shipments making shipping by rail far safer today than it was just two years ago.
We already have the needed infrastructure in place to safely move all of North Dakota's crude oil by rail and put lots of railroad workers to work for decades compared to employing hundreds of out of state workers for several months.
That's the inconvenient truth about the construction of this unnecessary pipeline. | {
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I believed that Slenderman was real, and for days I slept with the lights on
145 shares | {
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Story highlights Leo Manzano waved both U.S. and Mexico flags after winning in the Olympics
Ruben Navarrette: It was not a good idea for Manzano to carry two flags
He says Manzano should have been clear about which country he represented
Navarrette: By putting on the jersey for Team USA, it's clear what his choice was
Every few years, I reassess how I feel about Mexican-Americans who wave Mexican flags. Much of it has to do with who is doing the waving and under what circumstances.
In 2006, I wrote a column saying it was a bad idea for immigration reform advocates to wave Mexican flags as they marched through U.S. cities such as Phoenix, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. It's illogical to show your allegiance to one country while demanding accommodation from another.
But in 2007, I penned another column after attending a Luis Miguel concert in Las Vegas where fans of the Mexican singer unfurled Mexican flags. Nothing wrong with that, I concluded.
It's all about context. There is a big difference between a political protest and a concert.
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Now, thanks to U.S. Olympic medalist Leo Manzano, and what I consider to be the misguided and ill-mannered way he chose to celebrate his silver medal in the 1500-meters final, I get the chance to think through the subject of flag-waving once again.
After Manzano finished his race and secured his medal, he did what athletes typically do at the Olympics. He held up his country's flag -- the Stars and Stripes.
The 27-year-old was born in Mexico, but the United States is his country now. His father migrated here illegally from the city of Dolores Hidalgo. Manzano was brought here when he was 4. Like most immigrants, they came in search of greater opportunity. And they found it -- for themselves, and their children.
That little boy eventually became a U.S. citizen. And then, after a lot of hard work and thousands of hours of training, he got the chance to represent his country and compete in the Olympics. And, to put the cherry on the sundae, he actually wins a silver medal. The last time an American won a medal of any kind in the 1500 meters was 44 years ago.
JUST WATCHED U.S. distance running back at Games Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH U.S. distance running back at Games 03:56
You can't help but be proud of Manzano and the country that allowed him the opportunity to fulfill his potential.
So why did Manzano carry two flags with him on his victory lap? As the world looked on, he held up both the U.S. flag and the Mexican flag. Not a good look. And not a good idea.
Manzano posted messages on Twitter throughout the competition -- in Spanish and English. After his victory, he tweeted, "Silver medal, still felt like I won! Representing two countries USA and Mexico!"
That's funny. I only saw one set of letters on his jersey: USA.
Later, he said to the media that he was honored to represent the United States and Mexico.
I realize that, for many of my fellow Mexican-Americans, the image of Manzano waving two flags is no big thing. And for many Americans who are Mexican-born, it's actually a great thing. Both camps might even find the gesture charming -- albeit, for different reasons.
Most Mexican-Americans I know would need a whole team of therapists to sort out their views on culture, national identity, ethnic pride and their relationship with Mother Mexico. They're the orphans of the Southwest -- too Mexican for the Americans, too American for the Mexicans. Their positive reaction to the photo has less to do with Manzano than with their own sense of displacement.
Many Mexicans who came to the United States -- particularly those who came as professionals or became professionals once they got here -- look to Mexico with a mixture of affection and guilt. They romanticize what they left behind and find it easier to love the country from hundreds or thousands of miles away. They may live in the United States, but many of them still consider themselves children of Mexico -- the kind who run away from home.
For both groups, the fact that Manzano, who holds dual citizenship, made a decision to show off the flags of both countries was a kind of signal to the people of Mexico that this accomplished young man hadn't forgotten where he came from. For some, that concept warms the heart.
But the image didn't warm my heart. It upset my stomach.
Understand, I've been called a Mexican separatist, a racist who hates anyone who isn't Mexican or Mexican-American, someone who is obsessed with his ethnicity. In fact, I can't remember the last time someone accused me of not being proud of being Mexican or Mexican-American. And in the past 20 years, I've written hundreds of thousands of words in defense of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
That said, the photo bothered me.
Some people will insist that this is Manzano's choice to make, that it was his sweat and sacrifice that got him to London, and this was his victory to celebrate however he saw fit. Those people are wrong. They're focused on the individual. But the last thing the Olympics is about is the individual.
It's about being part of a team -- the U.S. Olympic team. It's about national pride, not ego. Manzano wasn't there to compete for himself but to represent his country. All he had to do was decide which country that was. He chose not to choose.
What am I missing? Where were the Italian-American athletes waving the Italian flag, or the Irish-Americans waving the Irish flag? I didn't see that.
I remember that, in 1992, Mexican-American boxer Oscar De La Hoya held up both the U.S. and Mexican flags after winning a gold medal in Barcelona. But that was largely symbolic since De La Hoya was born in the United States. He wasn't an immigrant caught between two countries.
Leo, con todo respeto (with all due respect), you should be proud of your accomplishment. You deserve it. But when you're an Olympic athlete, you don't get to have your cake and eat it, too. Sooner or later, you have to choose which country you're going to represent. And you did. You made that choice, when you put on the jersey for Team USA.
It wasn't unlike the choice your parents made when they chose the United States over Mexico a quarter century ago. They voted with their feet. It would be nice if you haven't left your heart behind.
This country took you in during your hour of need. Now in your moment of glory, which country deserves your respect -- the one that offered nothing to your parents and forced them to leave or the one that took you all in and gave you the opportunity to live out your dreams?
The answer should be obvious.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion | {
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Best Choice We care about passangers comfort
Main motive of our cooperate is not to make money but to make our clients happy and satisfied. We think that the piece of information which is made hidden on purpose is betrayal that is why go to the extra mile in getting rid of this immoral act by just providing you the genuine and pure data, all which you must need to know. We provide the brilliance of experience you will remember in future, the thing that makes us noticeable is the excellent services we provide. From the best of Luxary cars, we are having an endless array of choices which surely will make your mind to take time for decision. From Mercedes Benz, mini Cooper to mini budget tempo we provide everything you wish to have. | {
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TYSON FURY has revealed he is masturbating SEVEN times a day ahead of his big rematch against Deontay Wilder.
And the Gypsy King hopes it will give him the 'upper hand' as he bids to become WBC world heavyweight champ.
5 Tyson Fury has admitted he is masturbating seven times a day to release testosterone ahead of his rematch against Wilder
The two boxers will go 'at it' for Part II in Las Vegas after their controversial draw in December 2018.
And in a bid to keep his "testosterone flowing" Fury has admitted to one special way to release energy.
Speaking after the first press conference concluded ahead of the big fight, the 31-year-old said: "I'm doing a lot of things I didn't before.
"I'm eating five/six meals a day, drinking eight litres of water. If it's gonna give me an edge, I'm willing to try it.
"I'm masturbating seven times a day to keep my testosterone pumping."
FISTS OF FURY
Fury, married to wife Paris since 2008 with the couple having five children, then quoted lines from the 2004 hit song by Danzel, titled Pump It Up.
He added: "Pump it, pump it, pump it, pump it up! Dontcha know!
"I gotta to keep active and the testosterone flowing for the fight. Don't want the levels to go down."
It's not the first time sport stars might have resorted to solo tactics to improve 'performance'.
SunSport reported how sexologist and wife of Wolves keeper Rui Patricio advised the Portugal squad to masturbate at the World Cup.
And Albanian model Erjona Sulejmani, wife of Serie A star Blerim Dzemaili, has claimed many footballers turn down sex before games - and instead do it themselves.
5 Albanian model Erjona Sulejmani, wife of Bologna midfielder Blerim Dzemaili, says footballers often choose to masturbate instead of have sex before games Credit: PA:Empics Sport
5 Serie A wag Erjona Sulejmani was named Europe's most attractive fan in 2016 Credit: instagram/Erjona Sulejmani
DOES SEX BEFORE SPORT BOOST PERFORMANCE? THERE has been numerous studies into how sex could affect athletic performance. And unfortunately the waters are pretty murky as far as this is concerned. An expert writing for The Conversation on the topic concludes that "there is no detrimental or beneficial effect of sexual activity before competition on subsequent athletic performance". However, 'chasing sex' could indeed be detrimental, as it could come with 'sleep deprivation and alcohol/drug consumption' that could affect athletic performance. Curfews are often placed on athletes to ensure the mind and body is well rested before competition. One study reports that the effects of sex on athletic performance only come to light when the element of 'time' is considered. Laura Stefani, an assistant professor of sports medicine at the University of Florence, Italy, said: 'We show no robust scientific evidence to indicate that sexual activity has a negative effect upon athletic results. 'In fact, unless it takes place less than two hours before, the evidence actually suggests sexual activity may have a beneficial effect on sports performance.'
'SLIPPERY LIKE A GOLDFISH'
Fury will be hoping to 'shake' things up come February 22 and hand Wilder his first ever defeat as a pro boxer.
SunSport reported how Fury claims he will have one of the easiest nights of his career by knocking Wilder out in ROUND TWO of their rematch.
The 31-year-old Gypsy King is famous for his fabulous footwork and point scoring shots and claims he will be “slippery like a goldfish” on fight night.
Before his round-two win against tune-up opponent Tom Schwarz last June, the 6ft 9in ace had not won inside the opening six minutes since a 2010 walkover at Huddersfield Sports Centre.
TUG OF WAR
But the superstitious former unified champ has been getting signs that the second stanza will be the deciding one on February 22.
Fury said: “I am going to win the fight, Deontay can make up all the excuses he wants, he lost the first fair and square and the same will happen in the second.
“I have never been of sure of anything in my whole life, I am going to kick that mother f*****’s arse all over the ring.
“I have not had to lose any weight.
Most Read In Boxing BRONZE GOD Wilder in 'amazing physical shape' ahead of Fury trilogy, says protege Akpejiori PAUL THE OTHER ONE Floyd vs Paul tale of the tape: How they compare ahead of shock fight WHO YA GOT? Boxing legends predict Joshua vs Fury fight including Tyson and Mayweather Exclusive WARR READY Josh Warrington savouring Leeds' first home Premier League game in 16 years 'FIREWORKS' Roy Jones Jr admits 'mistake' taking Tyson fight and fears 'explosive' power WLAD ALL OVER Wilder was KO'd on floor by Klitschko during sparring, claims Whyte
5
“He has had to get out of jail a few times with his right hand but it will not be there this time, I will be super slippery, like a goldfish in a bowl.”
Fury is well known for creating a stir before his fights, and he chose the first press conference to slam Wilder's nose piercing.
After the American said he will "baptise" Fury, the Brit called Wilder a "little b****" for having the facial jewellery.
5 Tyson Fury has found one way to 'release some energy' | {
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Although Brooklyn is home to one of the largest populations of Asian Americans in the country, Brooklyn museum has never held an exhibit to highlight the contributions of Asian American activists and their art. This is a tragedy and it is a fact that Asian Americans are traditionally underrepresented in this field. We must change this now. At a recent asian american panel meeting at Brooklyn museum there was great attendance which shows that many people are interested in this subject. This is a unique opportunity to be a national leader on an important topic. Let's do this! | {
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The Art of War
“The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
Title: The Art of War
Author: Sun Tzu
Download: The_Art_of_War.pdf
ISBN: 0981162630
ISBN-13: 9780981162638
Format: paperback
Pages: 68
Size: 5″ × 8″
Price: $3.99
Buy now: $3.99 USD · £2.99 GBP
Description
Sun Tzu’s Art of War has been vastly influential in the east since China’s Warring States Period (403 BC – 221 BC). And though its first translation into a European language was only in 1782, the book’s significance was quickly recognized; and even such towering figures of Western history as Napoleon and General Douglas MacArthur have claimed it as a source of inspiration. Pax Librorum now brings readers this restored and highly accessible unannotated edition of Lionel Giles’ definitive translation of this enduring masterpiece. | {
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Loretta Lee is suing Google for failure to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. She worked for the tech giant at the Mountain View campus in California for eight years before she was fired for 'poor performance'
A female software engineer at Google sued the tech giant for creating a 'bro culture' where she was sexually harassed at work, a lawsuit claimed.
Loretta Lee worked for the company in Mountain View, California, near Silicon Valley for eight years before she was fired in February 2016 for 'poor performance'.
She filed a lawsuit to the Santa Clara County Superior Court alleging she was groped, slapped and sexually harassed by coworkers, according to The Mercury News.
Google has faced a series of claims in the last year of sexual misconducts and gender discrimination.
The company fired James Damore, former engineer for Google, after he circulated a memo stating there was a biological explanation to why woman were paid less.
The US Department of Labor and another former employee also accused the company of paying women less last year.
Now, Lee is filing her own lawsuit claiming male employees groped and slapped her before she was let go in 2016. She claims the company was notified by the continuous sexual harassment but did nothing to prevent it.
The suit described an incident where a co-worker popped up from underneath Lee's desk one night and told her 'she'd never know what he'd been doing down there'.
She reportedly was afraid he had left a camera or device installed underneath her desk.
The suit said 'Google's bro culture contributed to (Lee's) suffering frequent sexual harassment and gender discrimination, for which Google failed to take corrective action.
Google fired James Damore (pictured), former engineer for Google, after he circulated a memo stating there was a biological explanation to why woman were paid less
Google claims it followed its procedure when employees file complaints. But Lee said in the lawsuit she was wrongfully terminated and experienced sexual harassment daily from male colleagues. During one incident, a male colleague showed up to her apartment with alcohol unannounced. Pictured is Google's main campus in Mountain View, California
Lee was first hired for the company in 2008 at their Los Angeles campus before she was moved to the main location in Mountain View.
She claims the environment she experienced at the company for eight years was 'severe and pervasive' daily.
The lawsuit said she also experienced lewd comments, male colleagues spiking her drinks with whiskey, and males shoot her with Nerf balls.
One male colleague allegedly sent Lee a text message asking for a 'horizontal hug' and another showed up at her apartment unannounced with alcohol.
One male colleague grabbed her lanyard hanging form her neck to ask her for a name before he grazed his hand across her breasts, the lawsuit alleges.
Lee was told by her superiors in the company to file an official complaint the man who groped her, but she said she was afraid of being an 'informer'.
She was then written up for being uncooperative, which forced her to file her complaint
But then human resources said it found her claims 'unsubstantial' and did nothing, according to the lawsuit.
A Google spokesperson told DailyMail.com: 'We have strong policies against harassment in the workplace and review every complaint we receive.
'We take action when we find violations, including termination of employment.'
Lee is seeking an undisclosed amount from Google on top of $25,000 for failure to prevent sexual harassment, disability discrimination, wrongful termination and retaliation. | {
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Bonus Lightning Spells
Shocking Grasp (Reworked)
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
1 action Range : Touch
: Touch Components: V, S
V, S Duration: Instantaneous
A weapon you're wielding becomes surrounded by lightning energy, empowering its attacks and partially paralyzing your target.
As part of the action used to cast this spell, you must make a melee attack with a weapon against one creature within the spell's range, otherwise the spell fails. You have advantage on the attack roll if the target is wearing armor made of metal.
On a hit, the target suffers the attack's normal effects, but they take lightning damage instead of your weapon's usual damage type, and the target can't take reactions until the start of its next turn.
The spell's damage increases by 1d8 when you reach 5th level (2d8), 11th level (3d8), and 17th level (4d8).
Classes: Sorcerer, Wizard
Zap Bolt
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
1 action Range: 60 feet
60 feet Components: V, S
V, S Duration: Instantaneous
A quick bolt of lightning jumps from the tip of your fingers, partially stunning an enemy in its range.
Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 lightning damage and has disadvantage on its next Strength or Dexterity saving throw (your choice).
This spell's damage increases by 1d10 when you reach 5th level (2d10), 11th level (3d10), and 17th level (4d10).
Classes: Sorcerer, Wizard
Witch Bolt (Reworked)
1st-level Evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
1 action Range: 60 feet
60 feet Components: V, S, M (a twig from a tree struck by lightning)
V, S, M (a twig from a tree struck by lightning) Duration: Instantaneous
A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, coating the target in lightning.
Make a ranged spell attack against that creature. On a hit, the target takes 3d6 lightning damage.
For the duration, at the start of each of the creature's turns, the target takes 1d10 lightning damage.
At the end of each of its turns, the target can make a Constitution saving throw, ending the spell on a success.
When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the bolt's damage increases by 1d6 and the coating's damage increases by 1d0 for each slot level above 1st.
Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard | {
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FROM: Tools Commissar
TO: Arma 3 Modders
MATERIEL CATEGORY: Tools
CIRCUMSTANCES: Update 0.984 (Work Drive, Project Space)
SIZE: ~4.6 MB
STATUS
Across the past releases, we've shared our intention to tackle the P drive concept (including all the scripts used to maintain it). To deliver on this, we introduced Work Drive late last year, which has been updated over the past month and it is now the only tool to prepare and maintain the Project Directory. All previously used batch scripts are now simply calling Work Drive with the appropriate parameters.
Speaking of the Project Directory (Drive); it's a new term to designate something most of you know: it’s the substitute drive P known as "P Drive". As explained in a previous personal blog, the P drive is a concept. In short, it’s the file structure for the game from the game's perspective, P being its root directory. To give an example, the file data_f_mark.pbo is physically located in \Mark\Addons in the file tree. However, once loaded, the game will set its mounting point to \A3\data_f_mark, which corresponds to the prefix of the PBO file. To sum up, P:\ is a representation of the working directory of the game, from the perspective of the game.
Like previously mentioned (in various places like the forums or older TECHREPs), Work Drive is a tool designed to replace the previously scripted systems in order to provide a more reliable way to manage the work drive (P) and its content. Its first iteration was only able to manage the well-known P drive and to install Buldozer. It did this from any location (source / destination). In the recent development updates, the tool received more abilities:
Mount and Dismount any substitute drive (mapDisk)
Maintain Buldozer (DevP)
Extract game data to any Project Directory (FuturaToP)
Create the symbolic links (mapFolders)
An important note is that Work Drive will select the main install of the game as source. The destination directory will be the same as your project space b y default , as defined from the launcher of the tools ( Preferences->Settings - CTRL+E). However, unlike the previous behavior (using the install directory of the tools), if no custom directory is defined, a default one will be used in the document folder of the current user (...\Documents\Arma 3 Projects). This is done in order to avoid any potential conflict with the updates of the tools.
A few facts about Work Drive:
It takes around 4 minutes to extract the game data from and to a SSD (~12 minutes with a HDD).
Work Drive runs multiple tasks in parallel.
The faster your hard drive, the faster the process will be.
In case of an update of the game, it takes usually between 1 and 2 minutes to update the extracted data.
Work Drive won’t update a folder which already is up to date.
In the upcoming updates, this new default environment will be adjusted and polished. Your user feedback is valuable - if you have any feedback, please come and share it in this forum topic.
Besides the above, some other tools have been updated. There isn't anything major to report on, only small adjustments that can be consulted in the change log below. In the event you would like to share your feedback or report an issue, the forums and the Feedback Tracker are at your disposal.
CHANGELOG
TOOLS:
Work Drive Added: A default Project Directory (%userprofile%\Documents\Arma 3 Projects) Added: An ability to extract game data (/extractGameData /purgeGameData) Added: Support for symbolic link creation and destruction (/linkFolders /unlinkFolders) Added: Termination of sub-threads on exit Added: Print loaded assemblies on start-up Added: Display of a warning if Work Drive is elevated without parent Added: On error, F1 can be used to open the online help Added: Tobii.EyeX.Client.dll is now copied during the install of Buldozer as an optional file (needed for the current development branch of the game) Added: Better error handling Added: A possibility to switch into debug mode (by creating an empty file named __DEBUG__ in the Work Drive folder) Changed: Startup arguments can start with a - or / Changed: Work Drive will refuse to use the install directory of the tools as project directory Changed: Colors of the logger Fixed: The uninstall process of Buldozer was not removing the property files of the Core and Bin folders Fixed: When elevated, Work Drive was sometimes displaying the target for the drive to mount as undefined
Game Updater Fixed: The default destination path was systematically replaced by the default value even when it was a valid directory
Arma 3 Tools Launcher Added: Extended support for Work Drive Changed: Cleaned Project Drive management Changed: Some labels and icons have been changed due to the level up of Work Drive Changed: Any attempt to use the install directory of the tools (from the option form) as project directory will be denied Fixed: The option to mount the drive P on start-up was fired even when the Project Drive was already mounted Tweaked: Reworked Option form Tweaked: Various labels were updated Removed: Option to change the default log folder Removed: About box
DSUtils Added: Ability to use the newly generated key to sign PBOs (check-box from the key generation form) Changed: The signature check know remembers the last paths used Fixed: Potential CTD while generating the info file of the key
Addon Builder Changed: Maintenance update
Render Worlds Tweaked: Configs have been updated
FSM Editor Changed: Updated SQF language definition for Arma 3 1.60+
Publisher Added: Error details are now provided when an asynchronous operation performed on Steam fails in Publisher
BankRev Added: A new startup parameter -prefix to extract the data to Destination\Prefix\Data instead of Destination\PBOName\Data Added: UI, ability to use the PBO prefix to determine the final destination directory
BinMake Added: New EXE to handle the rules generation (Arma 3 Tools\BinMakeRules.exe)
MapDisk Changed: Functionality fully transferred to Work Drive
FuturaToP Changed: Functionality fully transferred to Work Drive
MapFolders Changed: Functionality fully transferred to Work Drive
DevP Added: Warning on startup Note: DevP is no longer maintained
TexView 2 Added: Link to the online help (Top menu>>Help) Added: Shortcut to save as (CTRL+SHIFT+S) Changed: Assembly information Changed: User settings are now stored in HKCU\Software\Bohemia Interactive\texView
Steam configuration Changed: Incremented version to reflect the current stage (0.984) Removed: The second install step (starter) is no longer needed
NOTES | {
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The Oregonian photographer Bruce Ely created a Gigapan image during the Portland Timbers home opener on April 14, 2011.
The image is made up of 612 individual photos taken over a 45-minute span and stitched together to form one large image. The final high resolution picture is 122,832 X 39,472 pixels or 4,848 megapixels.
The image is not supposed to represent one moment in the game. There are numerous stitching "errors". These are usually caused by a person that is partially in a picture moving to a different location by the time the camera made another pass.
Head over to the
image to find yourself and use Facebook to tag yourself and your friends.
-- | {
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Yuzik’s disappearance was first announced by her daughter, who said her mother was arrested “in another country” and that her trial was scheduled for this Saturday. She faces up to 10 years on charges of cooperating with Israeli intelligence, journalist Boris Voytsekhovskiy wrote on Facebook.
Russian journalist Yulia Yuzik has been detained in Iran on suspicion of espionage, according to her family members and Russian media reports.
“They took her passport on arrival in Tehran and told her they’ll give it back on her departure,” Voytsekhovskiy, identified as Yuzik’s ex-husband, told the RBC news website Friday.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps broke into her hotel room yesterday and accused her of cooperating with Israeli security services,” Voytsekhovskiy said.
Russia’s Embassy in Tehran told Russian outlets including RBC that it was aware of Yuzik’s detention and was “dealing with the situation.”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote that the Iranian ambassador to Moscow has been summoned to "clarify" the circumstances of Yuzik's detention.
Yulia Yuzik will be released soon, the state-run RIA news agency quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying on Friday.
Yuzik worked in Iran as a correspondent a few years ago and returned there recently on an invitation by an unknown party, Voytsekhovskiy wrote. | {
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Manuela Proietti e Francesco Rea
Come sono diventato astronauta
Uno dei primi ricordi importanti per le scelte che ho fatto nella vita, risale, piccolissimo, al mio primo incontro con colei che sarebbe stata la mia prima istruttrice di nuoto. Per rompere il ghiaccio con tutti noi bambini fa la più classica delle domande: cosa vorresti fare da grande? Ricordo benissimo che per la prima volta in quell’occasione ho detto: «io da grande voglio fare l’astronauta».
Ovviamente avrò risposto con la stessa immaginazione che vi sarebbe stata nel rispondere farò l’uomo ragno. Perché era un sogno, un vero sogno. Vivendo in Sicilia, a Catania, la realtà aeronautica e astronautica è sempre stata lontanissima. E non so dire se c’è un momento preciso nella mia vita in cui questo sogno si è risvegliato. So solo che adolescente quando fui negli Stati Uniti, in uno scambio di ospitalità tra famiglie nell’ambito di attività didattiche, il padre della famiglia che mi ospitava era un navigatore dei Marines sugli F18. Era una persona straordinaria, che grazie all’umanità che lo caratterizzava e alla conoscenza tecnologica che imponeva il suo ruolo, mi affascinò a tal punto che decisi, una volta tornato in Italia, di partecipare al concorso per entrare nell’aeronautica. Ecco, quello fu il primo passo che compii per divenire astronauta.
Finita la scuola partecipai, dunque, al concorso vincendolo, poi seguii l’iter formativo fino a divenire un pilota militare. Fui assegnato ad un reparto caccia, ho fatto tutta la mia carriera come pilota di Mx, per poi intraprendere la strada che più si addiceva alla realizzazione del mio sogno, quella di pilota sperimentatore. Fui selezionato come tale ed ebbi l’opportunità di seguire il corso e divenirlo.
Proprio in quel periodo l’Agenzia spaziale europea emise un bando per la selezione di nuovi astronauti. Inizialmente non volevo partecipare perché ritenevo non avessi i requisiti: troppo giovane con poca esperienza. Ma sollecitato da amici e superiori alla fine concorsi. La selezione durò un anno circa. La competizione in sé la vivevo bene, divertendomi, e non potrebbe essere altrimenti per chi fa il mio mestiere. La parte più difficile da vivere, in realtà, era l’attesa tra una prova e l’altra, attendere il risultato per sapere se potevi andare oltre.
Dopo circa un anno, passate tutte le prove, fui selezionato come astronauta dell’Agenzia spaziale europea. Oggi, dopo nove anni, mi ritrovo qui a parlare della mia prossima missione. Non lo avrei mai pensato per la prima, figuriamoci per la seconda.
La mia vita da astronauta
Credo sia ormai convinzione comune considerare l’astronauta una persona come tutti gli altri. Abbiamo una famiglia alle spalle, un lavoro appassionante, viviamo la vita come tutti. Certo, il tempo sembra non bastare mai. Amo fare sport, amo suonare la mia chitarra, amo passare il tempo con la mia famiglia. Conciliare tutto questo non è facile e per questo cerchiamo di utilizzare al meglio ogni istante che abbiamo. In questa fase sono in addestramento per la mia prossima missione e devo dividermi tra Houston e Mosca. Quando sono negli Usa dedico tutto il mio tempo libero alla famiglia e quando sono lontano, in Russia, cerco di rilassarmi con le mie passioni, leggendo un buon libro o trascorrendo del tempo con gli amici.
È molto difficile vedersi da fuori. Non saprei dire come sarebbe stata la mia vita se non avessi vissuto tutte le esperienze che ho vissuto. Amo pensare che ogni esperienza, quale che sia, rappresenti un momento di crescita, un momento della nostra evoluzione, del nostro diventare migliore. Se non fossi diventato astronauta oggi sarei un pilota sperimentatore, dell’aeronautica militare italiana, avrei avuto altre esperienze. Non sarei qui a parlare della mia prossima missione ma del prossimo aereo che devo sperimentare. Spero però che l’esperienza del volo spaziale mi abbia oggettivamente cambiato rendendomi un po’ migliore.
L’annuncio
Mi trovavo in treno, in viaggio per partecipare ad una conferenza, quando ricevetti una telefonata da parte del mio responsabile, il capo del corpo astronauti europeo. Mi informò che il Dg dell’Esa, intervenendo al vertice interministeriale sullo spazio dei paesi aderenti all’Agenzia spaziale europea in corso a Lucerna in Svizzera, aveva annunciato che il prossimo astronauta europeo sulla Stazione spaziale sarei stato io. Fu una gioia immensa che potei, per fortuna, condividere con un collega astronauta in viaggio con me e che aveva da poco concluso la sua missione nello spazio.
Il nome che ho scelto per la mia prossima missione
Quando ho saputo di essere stato assegnato a una nuova missione ho subito iniziato a pensare a quale nome avrei potuto dargli. Trattandosi della mia prima missione come astronauta europeo - in Volare sono stato equipaggio di una missione italiana, nell’ambito dell’agreement tra Nasa e Asi - volevo che fosse forte il senso di Europa e di internazionalità. Da qui la scelta di un termine inglese: Beyond, che in italiano significa oltre. Ho pensato a Beyond come a una tappa successiva del percorso di esplorazione compiuto dai miei due colleghi Thomas Pesquet e Alexander Gerst. Pesquet ha scelto Proxima, che vuol dire vicino, perché in effetti ci troviamo ancora nell’orbita bassa, lavoriamo a 400 km dalla Terra. Ma Proxima è anche il nome di una stella, la più vicina a noi, che rimanda al concetto di esplorazione. La missione di Gerst invece si chiama Horizons: da qualcosa di vicino, di prossimo, siamo passati all’orizzonte che è più lontano ma comunque visibile. In questo contesto, andare Beyond, andare oltre, credo dia un senso di allontanamento. Siamo ancora nell’orbita bassa, ma quello che facciamo è fondamentale per raggiungere nuove destinazioni.
Il logo che la rappresenta
Nel logo ho scelto di inserire dei simboli che richiamassero molti degli elementi di una missione spaziale. C’è la Terra, che è il luogo da cui veniamo e attorno al quale continuiamo a viaggiare. E c’è la Stazione spaziale internazionale, il nostro avamposto nello spazio. La Terra e la Stazione si vedono riflesse in un casco, che rappresenta l’attività extraveicolare. E’ un casco generico senza bandiere, potrebbe essere un casco del futuro a indicare che ci stiamo allontanando dalla Terra. E’ per questo che nella seconda parte del logo sono presenti la Luna e Marte. Perché questo casco, questa spinta, ci porterà a tornare un giorno a volare verso la Luna e in futuro verso Marte.
Passeggiate spaziali
Non è fatto comune e per me è un privilegio poter essere stato scelto per le attività extraveicolari. È un ruolo importante che segna ulteriormente il contributo che l’Italia dà alle attività spaziali. Essere veterano di questa attività, se mi sarà chiesto di farne ancora, mi darà modo di tramandare la mia esperienza a chi affronterà per la prima volta questa prova.
Le attività extraveicolari sono tra le attività più prestigiose per un astronauta. Tutti sperano di poterne fare almeno una volta nella vita. Nella prima missione ho avuto l’opportunità di effettuarne due, anzi possiamo dire una e mezza (ride, riferendosi all’incidente dell’acqua nel casco che ha causato l’interruzione dell’Eva 23, ndr).
Nel programma di addestramento per la mia missione attualmente sono previste diverse attività extraveicolari che spero vengano confermate. Alcune uscite dovrebbero essere dedicate alla sostituzione di una serie di batterie esterne che si trovano sul Truss, il traliccio della Stazione spaziale. Ci stiamo addestrando anche a un’altra serie di attività che potrebbero svolgersi durante il mio periodo di permanenza in orbita, alcune di queste estremamente complesse dedicate al ripristino del pieno utilizzo di Ams, l’Alpha magnetic spectrometer, esperimento in buona parte italiano per la ricerca di antimateria e materia oscura nello spazio.
Eva 23
Fu un’esperienza decisamente diversa, mi ritrovai con un litro e mezzo di acqua che invadeva il mio casco e dovetti rientrare in anticipo. Un’avaria tecnica che spero non ricapiti più. Ma non mi ha condizionato, avessi avuto l’occasione di tornare fuori subito dopo lo avrei fatto. Fa parte del nostro lavoro. Come quando facevo il pilota sperimentatore, capitava di avere delle avarie, eravamo lì per quello, ma dopo quelle esperienze si tornava subito in volo. L’importante è che da queste esperienze se ne tragga insegnamento. Di quanto accadutomi in quell’occasione ciò che conta è che non accadrà mai più. Ci saranno altre avarie, ma non quella che ho vissuto io.
Prepararsi a un'Eva
Quando ci si prepara all’uscita extraveicolare si devono seguire delle procedure per evitare possibili embolie. Le condizioni in cui ci si trova a lavorare nello spazio, infatti, sono simili all’alta quota sulla Terra. Normalmente il nostro corpo respira un mix di ossigeno e azoto, e quest’ultimo, una volta che si arriva in quota, tende a gonfiarsi in bollicine e a creare delle embolie. Per evitare questo rischio, gli astronauti prima di un’Eva devono passare alcune ore sottoposti a pressurizzazione respirando ossigeno puro e facendo degli esercizi per minimizzare il contenuto di azoto nel corpo. Gli astronauti normalmente utilizzano le ore in cui si trovano nella prima parte della camera stagna, chiamata equipment lock, per rivedere insieme la missione, quelli che saranno i punti più critici e pericolosi, in cui il rischio è maggiore e le operazioni sono più delicate. Sono momenti molto impegnativi, in cui ci si trova come a visualizzare le scene di un film mentale di quella che sarà l’attività extraveicolare.
Comandante Parmitano
Il comandante della Iss è un facilitatore. Mi piace paragonare il suo ruolo a quello del capitano di una squadra sportiva, dove tutti cooperano per un fine comune, incluso il capitano, il cui compito però è quello di mettere ciascuno nelle condizioni di svolgere il proprio ruolo nel miglior modo possibile, interfacciandosi anche con l’arbitro e l’allenatore.
Allo stesso modo Il comandante della Iss parla direttamente e costantemente con lo staff a terra, con il Centro di comando e controllo e il direttore di volo e deve sapere assegnare al proprio equipaggio i ruoli più adatti per ognuno in modo da ottimizzare l’andamento della missione.
Di fatto le responsabilità formali di un comandante sono il risultato generale della missione e la sicurezza dell’equipaggio della stazione.
Avere questo ruolo non cambia il mio approccio, che sarà sempre quello di confrontarmi sia con il resto dell’equipaggio, che con gli addestratori e gli istruttori.
Riguardo al fatto di essere il primo italiano, per me non è l’aspetto individuale che conta. Non ha importanza che l’individuo Luca Parmitano ricopra questo ruolo. Ciò che va sottolineato è che il risultato di un sistema, che è quello italiano ed europeo, fa sì che una commissione assolutamente indipendente, come quella che nomina gli equipaggi, decida di assegnare a un italiano il ruolo di comando. | {
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Transgender Woman Speaks Out After Name Change Battle
Wednesday, November 21st 2012, 9:58 pm
By: News 9
After spending thousands of dollars fighting the State of Oklahoma, a transgender woman is now allowed to change her name from Steven to Christie.
Last year, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Bill Graves denied the name change request citing the Bible instead of Oklahoma code. Now, the Civil Court of Appeals says Judge Graves abused his discretion, and it appears this is not the first time.
Christie Ann Harvey spent more than $18,000 in legal fees and says her life has been on hold for 16 months, until now.
"I'm doing absolutely wonderful," Harvey told News 9. "[I'm] happy to get the splendid news."
Harvey is recalling the moment she realized there was nothing easy about changing the name Steven to Christie in Judge Bill Graves' courtroom.
9/28/2012 Related Story: ACLU To Fight For Transgender OKC Woman Denied Name Change
"My attorney and I were just flabbergasted," Harvey said. "I mean, I was absolutely shocked. It was the last thing that I thought would happen."
Brittany Novotny, an Oklahoma City Attorney and a transgender woman, calls Judge Graves' decision a politically motivated stunt.
"The judge decided to insert his personal opinion into the matter and use his personal opinion as a basis for a ruling," Novotny said.
Court officials say Graves is out of town and was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
According to court records, Graves originally stated a person cannot change sex through surgery because DNA stays the same. Not long after Graves issued that opinion, Harvey was actually allowed to have the gender on her driver's license changed. However, the name Steven had to stay.
"The very state that says you can't have a female name because you can't be female, recognized me as female," Harvey said.
In an unanimous vote, the Court of Civil Appeals is ordering Judge Graves to grant the name change.
11/20/12 Related Story: Oklahoma Appeals Court Says Transgender Woman Can Change Name
"Not one of those [judges] thought that there was a legal leg to stand on," Novotny said.
Harvey says she is a conservative person and belongs to the Republican party, which is the same party Judge Graves served as a state representative prior to becoming a judge.
In August, Graves denied yet another transgender woman's name change request. | {
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Apple announced a mountain of new software updates during its two-hour WWDC keynote on Monday.
Highlights included dark mode for iOS 13, a "Sign in with Apple" feature that's clearly shade at Facebook and Google, an App Store and menstrual cycle tracking for Apple Watches, and the death of iTunes. Oh, and of course, the ridiculously powerful and pricey new "cheese grater" Mac Pro.
There's enough shiny new stuff to satisfy any Apple geek, but the one announcement that's got me the most excited is iPadOS, which will make the iPad more computer-like than before so that I can actually get "real" work done on it.
It's become something of a running joke that the iPad is not a real computer. It's an iPad, so it's great for watching videos, playing games, and reading, but for work? Ehhh...
iPadOS feels like a big step forward for the iPad.
Apple's been trying to change the iPad's narrative for years. iOS 9 gave iPads Split View to run two apps next to each other. iOS 11 added more multi-app features with the ability to open an app window on top of another using Slide Over, a macOS-like dock, drag-and-drop, and a Files app. iOS 12 sprinkled in a few more iPad apps like Apple News, Stocks and Voice Memos, but that was it.
iPadOS, however, feels like a big step forward for the iPad. No, iPadOS isn't a completely new reimagining of the iPad's software — it's still iOS — but Apple's tweaked it in many ways to make it more capable as a productivity machine.
It starts on the home screen. In addition to displaying more apps on the main home screen (you get a 5 x 6 grid instead of 4 x 5), you can also add the "Today View" and panel of widgets to the left side. Two widgets can be pinned to remain in view and the rest of them are just a swipe up.
Putting the widgets panel on the home screen makes iPadOS feel a bit like Android, but that's alright with me because a core pillar of productivity is speed. Being able to see important information at a glance is super important. Time is money, after all.
iPad OS's new home screen puts widgets right in front of you, no right swipe necessary. Image: apple
Another major productivity boost on iPadOS: multi-window support for the same app. iPadOS doesn't add the resizable app windows you're used to on Mac or Windows, but at least you can do things like open two Notes apps in Split View, have another Notes app open in Slide Over, and have another Note app open in full screen. An Exposé view in the multitasker shows all instances of any app.
I know it may not sound like anything groundbreaking, but as somebody who writes for a living and needs to have access multiple notes at once, the ability to open multiple instances of the same app is very useful.
I can't overstate how practical it is to be able to open two websites side-by-side in Safari or two Microsoft Word documents.
Slide Over now lets you cycle between all previously opened apps. Image: apple
Furthermore, if you have an app open in Slide Over view, there's an additional gesture bar at the bottom that lets you cycle between all previous apps you opened in Slide Over. You can think of the new juiced-up Slide Over as being like an iPhone X that hovers on top of other apps.
Then, there's desktop Safari. While I mostly don't have serious beef with viewing websites in a tablet-optimized view, every once I'm disappointed with how limiting tablet-view can be. For example, tablet view doesn't do some of our bigger reviews for products like the iPad mini (2019) and OnePlus 7 Pro justice; many of the full-width photos are cropped on tablets.
And there's tons more easily-missable features spread all throughout iPad OS that'll delight people like yours truly who've bumped up against a wall trying to make the iPad work as a laptop replacement.
There's a revamped Files app with a column view that's more reminiscent of Finder on the Mac. You can now see all the meta data for any file and quickly access markup tools to do things like rotate a photo or convert documents into a PDF. You can unzip and zip files.
The new Files app has column view and shows meta data for files. Image: apple
You can press and hold onto an app's scroll bar and swipe up and down really quickly. There's new gestures to cut, copy, and paste text. You no longer need to shake the iPad to undo something — just use a three-finger swipe left. Selecting text is no longer a clumsy affair where you need to long press to bring up a magnifying glass; on iPadOS you simply tap where you want the cursor to go and slide to quickly select.
Wait, there's more! The full-size keyboard shrinks into an iPhone-sized one with a pinch gesture so you can use the new swipe-based "QuickPath" feature to input text. Safari's got a download manager!
If you've got an iPad that works with Apple Pencil, you can take a screenshot by swiping in from the lower left corner instead of pressing the power button + home button (on iPads with Touch ID) or power button + volume down button (on 2018 iPad Pros). If you take a screenshot of a website in Safari, there's an option to screenshot the entire page without all of the breaks in between.
There's over 30 new keyboard shortcuts and support for USB-C drives and SD cards (via an adapter! Safari lets you upload file. iPadOS even has mouse support (it's in Accessibility), but it's there!
The list of new iPadOS features that makes iPads more work-ready goes on and on and I'd be here all day waxing poetic about all of the tiny features so I'll stop right now.
My goto work machine is a 2015 12-inch MacBook because macOS is built for work, but I've been wanting to switch to an 12.9-inch iPad Pro since last fall because it's so much better at things like gaming, videos, and reading. An iPad also gets way better battery life.
As it stands with iOS, most iPad owners need to bend over backwards to find workarounds or new workflows to do things that they can do with ease on a MacBook. With iPadOS, I think — I'll have to really test this out when it's released in the fall — I might finally be able to complete all my work on an iPad without relearning a million new ways to do it. | {
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Karl Lagerfeld, one the 20th century’s greatest fashion designers, died Tuesday in Paris. Credited with saving Chanel when he became its creative director, Lagerfeld was known, not only for his stylistic brilliance, but also his outspoken and controversial comments.
His perspective on fashion was invaluable, but his critiques of women represent the darker side of the industry.
The haute couture king told the New York Times that fashion designers are artisans, not artists. As catwalk looks have become increasingly unattainable, with models debuting styles you wouldn’t see anywhere but the runway, Lagerfeld emphasized fashion’s utility.
Designers “take themselves very seriously because they want to be taken as artists,” he said. “I think we are artisans. It’s an applied art. There’s nothing bad about that. If you want to do art, then show it in a gallery.”
Despite his lifetime contracts with high-fashion labels Chanel and Fendi, Lagerfeld embodied a down-to-earth perspective on clothes. “People buy dresses to be happy,” he said .
But the designer’s legacy is tainted by the way he conformed to industry stereotypes. Fashion may have been more than a piece of art to him, but women were not.
Lagerfeld had a habit of complaining about women’s bodies, whether he was saying they looked ugly or need to lose weight. He called Adele “a little too fat,” as an aside while discussing her lovely voice, and later insulted plus-sized women again: “No one wants to see curvy women on the catwalk.”
He also grumbled about other people's faces. In 2012, he insulted Pippa Middleton saying the Duchess of Cambridge is beautiful, but “her sister struggles. I don’t like the sister’s face. She should only show her back.”
Worst of all, Lagerfeld dismissed objections to sexual harassment in the industry. He told Numero magazine last spring that he was "fed up" with the #MeToo movement. "If you don’t want your pants pulled about," he said, "don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent."
Lillian Fallon, a New York City-based fashion writer, said Lagerfeld’s conflicting legacy represents a broader trend. “His comments on plus-size women and models in general kind of summarize the elitist attitude of the fashion industry and the treatment of women as objects meant for consumption,” Fallon said. “He seemed to embody a lot of the negative stereotypes of the fashion industry.”
Lagerfeld “really was not on board with the push to have a more accurate representation of women and wasn’t really interested in diverse beauty.” | {
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A Sri Lankan was arrested Friday by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) due to sex crime charges in San Jose del Monte City, Bulacan.
The NBI, in a press statement, identified the suspect as Mohamed Shafri Razeek, who is married to a Filipina.
Razeek allegedly forced his wife to have sex with him while they were being recorded live using a mobile phone.
The Filipina revealed that since November 2018, they have been doing these sexual acts against her will. She said every time she refuses Razeek's request to have live sex, he would physically abuse her.
Razeek even prohibited her from going out of their house, the wife said.
The victim learned their sex videos were being viewed in the country after some of her nude photos online were sent to her by her friends. This prompted the Filipina to file a complaint against Razeek before the NBI.
Authorities said viewers outside the country pay P 1,000 to P2,000 to also watch the couple's sexual acts through a website called "Bonga Cam." | {
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While we all knew Sony Pictures Animation was releasing an animated Spider-Man movie in December of next year and that Miles Morales was the lead, until this weekend Sony hadn’t released the title or even confirmed whether Peter Parker would be making an appearance in the movie. But with CCXP (Comic-Con Experience) happening in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sony decided to use the biggest Comic-Con in South America to unveil new details about the web-swinger’s upcoming animated adventure by having producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller take the stage with Erico Borgo from Omelete to answer a few questions.
One of the big things fans wanted to know was, how would Peter Parker factor in the movie?
In the various Miles Morales Spider-Man comics, which first started in 2011, we have seen different versions of the Peter Parker/Miles Morales relationship. In Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Miles is bitten by a spider infected with Parker’s blood. Even though he has amazing abilities, Miles decides he just wants to live a normal life. But after watching Spider-Man die at the hands of Green Goblin, Miles is inspired to try his hand at being Spider-Man.
Conversely, in Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Peter Parker is alive and well and has a relationship with Miles. They even team up to fight Norman Osborn.
Which brings us back to the upcoming animated Spider-Man movie. Shortly after world premiering the trailer and announcing the title as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Lord (who also has sole credit on the screenplay) and Miller revealed that Peter Parker is definitely in the movie and plays a middle-aged mentor to Miles. While you might think this means Peter Parker has a big role, Lord and Miller made it clear this is a Miles Morales movie and Parker is passing the baton to Miles as the new Spider-Man.
Now before I go any further, I’m going to show you how if you were paying close attention during the trailer, you might have already picked up on some of this information and how, I think, the film is actually using some of the comic book storylines.
At the very end of the trailer, Miles is in a train station, sitting on a bench, talking to someone. In the scene, he says, “Wait…so how many of us are there?” The person sitting next to him is Peter Parker. He’s the one on the left in the picture below!
Going even further down the rabbit hole, towards the beginning of the trailer, Miles is in a cemetery and we can see what looks like Peter Parker on the headstone:
Next, when Sony Pictures Animation sent out the press release for the trailer, they included this info about the picture below
Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) falls through an alternate-universe New York City in Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Finally, when the studio tweeted about the trailer, they said:
Enter a universe where more than one wears the mask.
Based on the above info, I think the animated movie is going to follow at least part of the storyline of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man by chronicling how Miles Morales got his powers and showing the death of Spider-Man. This would explain why Miles goes to the cemetery to visit Peter Parker’s grave. The film could then show Miles deciding to use his newfound powers for good, and as he tries them out, somehow ends up in an alternate universe where Peter Parker is still alive and becomes the mentor that Lord and Miller talked about.
By doing this, you get to show a different side of Peter Parker that fans have never seen in a movie. You make all the Miles Morales fans happy because he’s the star of the show. And they’ve opened the door to a world where everything you know about Spider-Man is different and the future possibilities are endless. Finally, you make it very easy for people to understand this animated movie has nothing to do with the live-action Spider-Man movies, which I’m sure will make Marvel Studios happy. It’s a win-win for everyone. | {
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I am a 400-foot tall purple platypus-bear with pink horns and silver wings. The following information is not considered to be part of the main continuity.
Afiko, known as the Betrayer, was an airbender from the Southern Air Temple who revealed the location of his home to the Fire Nation, after which the country's army raided it during the Air Nomad Genocide. Made notorious by this betrayal, Afiko was charged with treason in 5 AG and later executed by decree of Fire Lord Sozin.
Contents show]
History
A bitter jealousy
Born in the Southern Air Temple, Afiko was seemingly normal growing up, but he grew jealous when Aang's identity as the Avatar was announced. Envious, Afiko betrayed his people by revealing the temple's location to the Fire Nation.[1]
Traitor
Fire Nation soldiers stormed the temple and slaughtered the other monks, but they were too late to catch Aang, who had run away from home shortly before the assault. Afiko was instrumental in engineering the genocide of his fellow Air Nomads, earning a place as Fire Lord Sozin's close adviser. He also seemed to have aided Sozin in attacking the Earth Kingdom, in that he is often shown blocking or dispersing earthbending attacks and attacking earthbenders. The traitorous monk died long before Aang's return and the subsequent undermining of all Afiko's work. In the end, despite his loyalty to the Fire Nation and his achievements, historical records indicate that Afiko met his demise in the war's fifth year, as Fire Lord Sozin had him killed for being a traitor.[1]
Gallery
Add an image
Known appearances in cards
Card number Card name Type Rarity 8 Whirling Debris strike rare 101 Bad Breath advantage rare 131 Afiko, bringer of ill winds ally rare 143 Chi Absorption strike uncommon 145 Graceful Leap strike uncommon 173 Hollow Soul Hurricane strike Zenemental 218 Afiko chamber common 219 Afiko chamber common 220 Afiko chamber uncommon 221 Afiko chamber common 222 Afiko chamber uncommon 223 Afiko chamber rare
References | {
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If fundraising figures are any indication, it’s going to be a bad election year for the GOP. Currently, Hillary Clinton tops the list with just under $33 million. In second place: Bernie Sanders, who has raised over $26 million, primarily from small donors giving an average of $30 each.
On the other side of the aisle, Ben Carson is leading the pack – but he has raised only about 2/3rds of what Clinton has been able to garner. In fact, according to the most recent filings with the Federal Elections Commission, Clinton’s current war chest exceeds those of Carson, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio combined.
There are two interrelated dynamics at work here. One of them is the message, about which Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are abundantly clear: the billionaire class can no longer have it all at the expense of the rest of us. Both Hillary and Bernie stand for Progressive causes, though they are in disagreement on how to carry out a Progressive agenda. Significantly, Sanders, advocating a more socialist approach similar to the democracies of Western Europe, has a bigger donor base than Clinton, despite having raised less money. Clinton’s Progressive agenda remains within the confines of the current system, which she believes can be rehabilitated. She recently made a statement recalling something historians have attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, saying, “We need to save capitalism from itself.”
The other has to do with the overarching economic issues that are front and center of this election cycle. In a way, the tightening race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is a microcosm of the election as a whole. GOP candidates have given lip services to issues such as income inequality and the right to health care and an education. However, their solutions are largely based on the same tired, old “trick-down” policies that have been dragging the nation down for over a generation.
Increasingly, the electorate is no longer buying it. While it’s true that GOP donors have far deeper pockets, and that out of the 158 billionaire families who spend the most trying to buy elections, all but 20 give to Republican candidates. But it’s not doing the Republicans much good, this time around. As has been pointed out repeatedly in recent years, there are far more of the 98% than there are the 2% – and the former has had enough of being pushed around, dictated to and ripped off by the latter. Thanks in large part to the World Wide Web, the ready availability of vast stores of information and the Progressive web-based media, eyes are being opened across the country – and the world.
Bernie Sanders has called for a “political revolution.” It appears that the revolution, in one form or another, has arrived. Whether it will begin with a major overhaul of the system as espoused by Bernie Sanders or the incremental change advocated by Hillary Clinton, remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however: as Randi Rhodes predicted long ago, the Republicans finally appear to have overreached themselves. The revolution, fast or slow, is leaving them behind in the dust on the wrong side of history. | {
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Washington, DC – The first trial of people mass-arrested during protests against Donald Trump’s Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2017 is well underway. Jurors are continuing to hear testimony from prosecution witnesses called by Assistant US Attorneys Jennifer Kerkhoff and Rizwan Qureshi.
The current trial group of defendants consists of six individuals, including two medics and one journalist, who were caught up in the indiscriminate mass arrest on 12th & L streets in DC on Donald Trump’s inauguration day. None of them are alleged to have committed any acts of property destruction or violence, but the prosecution claims that through their alleged conspiracy with “the group” they can still be held responsible.
The most recent hearings have seen three major components of the case established by the prosecution. An undercover officer testified to his recollection of planning meetings and protests that he attended. A detective also recounted his work extracting information from defendant’s phones, and details of cell data was scrutinized. Jurors also began to hear from the police commander who was responsible for ordering the mass arrest on January 20.
Testimony on Wednesday, November 29 picked up where Tuesday left off. The defense completed their cross-examination of the testimony of DC Police officer Bryan Adelmeyer, who had been sent in undercover to infiltrate “Disrupt J20” planning meetings for anti-Trump protests on inauguration day. Adelmeyer was questioned about different details of the January 8 “Disrupt J20” meeting that he attended in a church basement.
Mostly at issue was a video of the meeting, provided by Project Veritas and recently submitted into evidence by Assistant US Attorney Kerkoff. (Defense attorneys had not yet cross-examined Adelmeyer when the video was introduced during his direct testimony the day before.) When asked if the Project Veritas video had been checked by an expert for signs of tampering, Officer Adelmeyer said he didn’t know.
The defense then played portions of the video in which the timer at the bottom either jumped ahead in time or suddenly disappeared, demonstrating that the recording had been altered in some way. It was also pointed out that the government had admitted to editing the video to hide the identity of the Project Veritas employee who provided it.
Officer Adelmeyer admitted that he did not know if other Project Veritas members were at the meeting, raising the possibility that the far-right fake news entity, which boasts of using “entrapment journalism”, planted people in the video to say things which are now being used in court as evidence of conspiracy. When pressed by the defense, Adelmeyer also stated that he had been unaware that Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe pleaded guilty to “entrance under false pretenses” in 2013 after he allegedly broke into a Democratic Senator’s office.
The next witness was Detective David Evans. Evans said his job immediately after inauguration day, along with US Attorney Special Agent John Marsh, was to extract as much information as possible from cell phones and other electronics seized from those arrested at 12th & L streets. Evans stated that he used a Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) made by the Israeli company Cellebrite to “download basically everything inside the phone.”
Extraction reports taken from each of the defendant’s phones was then presented. Information displayed on monitors in open court included detailed information about the specific Android phone (SIM, IMEI #, etc) as well as the defendants’ hotspot passwords and whether location services were enabled.
Detective Evans clarified that on phones with encryption enabled, he was only able to access basic device information and not the contents of the phone storage. (iPhones have encryption enabled by default, while many Android devices do not.)
One Cellebrite extraction report showing data taken from one defendant’s cell phone reportedly contains over 10,000 pages. In early 2016, we published an investigation detailing how data taken from phones by police using Cellebrite UFED devices is often then fed into NSA-preferred intelligence software to map out social networks.
Assistant US Attorney Kerkhoff proceeded to show emails and texts sent to a phone seized from a defendant. She offered emails containing basic information meant for street medics, as well as a jail support form, and asserted they were evidence of a premeditated criminal conspiracy. A short exchange of texts between two defendants who were arrested in the kettle at 12th & L just a few minutes after they arrived at the march, gave insight to the prosecution’s case.
The following messages were cited by Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff as evidence of a conspiracy because the messages show “their efforts to get her [the defendant] with the group and her efforts to join the group.”
-“Marching down 13th now.” -“Coming” -“I’m on Rhode Island and 1100” -“I’m chasing y’all down 13th” -“Turned on K”
Assistant US Attorney Kerkhoff made statements that seemed to claim that by continuing to seek out the protest march despite seeing a “trail of destruction” (Kerkhoff’s words) behind it, defendants in this text exchange were therefore involved in a conspiracy with the people who caused the damages.
The majority of texts and emails the prosecution showed from seized phones contained basic dispatch messages such as ‘medics needed in this area’ or other logistical info about time and location of different protest events, such as the locations of blockade actions at inauguration checkpoints. Other texts showed street medics discussing whether or not they would wear red tape identifying themselves at different protest events scheduled throughout Inauguration day.
No cell phone data provided as evidence in Wednesday’s hearing appears to have any bearing on the current defendants, except to show that some of them were either receiving updates about basic protest logistics or discussing in real-time their efforts to locate and attend a protest march.
Brett Cohen, defense attorney for Alexei Wood, a photojournalist who is currently facing a felony prosecution for covering the Trump inauguration protest, stated that DC Police seized several items of media equipment from Mr. Wood.
Before Judge Leibovitz ended court for the day, DC Police Commander Keith Deville began to testify. Deville was in charge of ‘Civil Disturbance Response’ on Inauguration Day & reportedly issued the order to carry out the indiscriminate mass arrest at 12th & L.
In what little testimony he did give before the clock ran out, Deville seemed to demonstrate a personal bias against anarchist protesters, saying “this particular group was going to be problematic … they were anarchists.”
DC Police Commander Deville's limited testimony in court so far seems to support the claim that he targeted the 'anti-capitalist and anti-fascist' march for an abusive mass arrest based on the group's political beliefs pic.twitter.com/4Bs1uQEYZe — Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) November 29, 2017
Police radio from January 20 was played, along with a video compilation of helicopter footage, included a revealing exchange between Deville and an unknown subordinate. Asking about a different group than the group of people in and around the anticapitalist and antifascist march whose mass-arrest he would order, Deville said “Is that group anarchist-type or just protests[sic]?” to which the DC police officer replied, “There’s some anarchists but they’re not all anarchists.”
Commander Deville’s testimony is expected to continue at length on Thursday, November 29. Our previous post: Trials Begin for Trump Inauguration J20 Protests
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It's Pisces season, and any girl who reps the water sign is sure to be feeling on top of the world this week. So in the spirit of both my star sign and obsession with The Shape of Water, I decided to ask girls how they've scored an orgasm in aquatic environments.
Ya'll need Jesus, but that's why you're my people.
wait is the guy in the shape of water actually a fish? like does she literally have sex with a fish? i haven’t seen it but i thought he was like a nature spirit or something… but…. is he a fish — ari (@AWFULGARBAGEMAN) March 14, 2018
'I got my entire school banned from a water park'
You had one job girl—get an education. But babe reader Ellen went ahead and ruined her class' school trip all for the sake of getting some dick. "I was like 15 and I was caught on the security cameras doing 'inappropriate activities' in the hot tubs with my boyfriend at the time," she said. Ellen also admitted that there were live witnesses still in the hot tub with her and her man. "Every end of year trip, we had to go somewhere else after that," she added.
'I once had sex in a puddle outside'
Alyssa, another babe reader said her puddle pounding was creepy. "Half my booty cheek was in water and the rest of my body was out," she said. "I do NOT recommend."
I even sought out Twitter and they're hella wild!
Girls use Twitter to share their most sinful confessions to the web, and when I tell you their wet n' wild, I mean it.
#ConfessionToMyParents
Um. I kinda had sex in your bed. But it was just once. AND YOU HAD A WATER BED! — Swagholor's Mama – Wentz Wagon Driver (@NotUrAvgHoodrat) July 1, 2016
I would probably get my ass beat if my parents found out I was getting dicked down in their bed, but at the same time, it's kind of your duty to fuck in a water bed.
'The water drained my pleasure fluids'
I once had sex in a swimming pool, sucked coz I was already a lil fucked and the water drained my pleasure fluids — Sani (@WenaSani) October 24, 2014
If someone can tell me how sex in a pool can drain your pleasure fluids, that'd be great, so I can keep my cooch far from chlorine. Thanks.
This girl gave it up in a pool….while children were present
"I once had sex in a wave pool full of children. Some where even using goggles under water ???☺️" — Ms.Eggplant™ (@That_Eggplant) December 2, 2013
We all have our weaknesses, but damn girl, children? I personally could never scar their eyes like that, but get yours, sis.
One Twitter girl paid a big price for her swamp sex adventure
Happy 4 year anniversary to the time I had sex in a swamp and got a UTI that resisted 3 antibiotics and spread to my kidneys! pic.twitter.com/7VtPNw82m4 — Alana Massey (@AlanaMassey) July 24, 2017
I've only ever seen a swamp when I was in Girl Scouts. While the white girls were hopping out of canoes and into the musty waters, I kept my Black ass on street-level. Now I know leaving myself out of the group activities was the best decision of my life.
This reader disobeyed her boyfriend's mom altogether
Babe reader Jenny went against her boyfriend's parents and eliminated any remaining purity he had. "They were super concerned with making sure their son didn't have sex," she started, "so we were in his pool and his mom ran to the neighbors house for like half an hour. We had sex in his pool, and then again in his garage." Kudos to her. I'm always here for doing double duty when the adults are away from their post.
'It was very public'
Babe reader Rebecca shared her experience in a hot spring. "I guess nobody saw ," she said. "It was quite nice the water was warm and steamy." I can't lie. If I wasn't so damn poor, eating ramen noodles for breakfast and could afford a trip to a hot spring, I'd be doing the same thing, girl.
This girl recounted her time at a family pool party
Emma, another babe reader, wasn't sure if her story was an adequate description of a wet sex encounter. "Does my ex fingering my bootyhole in a pool during a family July 4th party count?" She asked. "His 10-year-old brother called him out on it too." While I don't enjoy fingers in my cave, I can't imagine how little bro is holding up after witnessing that. Should we start a GoFundMe for his therapy? I'd be willing to chip in.
Related stories recommended by this writer:
● We asked girls how they prepare for dick appointments, and WOW you guys are some evil geniuses
● We asked girls to tell us their very first hoe stories’ and the shit they told us was wiiiild
@aribines | {
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"Fun park Mirnovec" u Biogradu, nakon 14 mjeseci radova, bliži se kraju izgradnje.
Vlasnik Franjo Koletić svoju investiciju vrijednu 12 milijuna eura planira otvoriti početkom srpnja i nema sumnje da će to biti dosad neviđeni spektakl, pogotovo kada znamo da je Koletić vlasnik najveće hrvatske tvrtke za proizvodnju pirotehnike "Mirnovec".
Zadarski.hr je obišao park krajem svibnja i stanje koje smo zatekli sugerira da to neće biti samo prvi i najveći zabavni park u Hrvatskoj i regiji, nego jedan potpuno drugačiji način zabave i ponude za sve domaće i strane goste, projekt industrije zabave pred kojim je očito sjajna poslovna budućnost.
Park je podijeljen u tri tematske cjeline - Gusarski grad, Divlji zapad i Svemir - unutar kojih je 25 različitih atrakcija.
Kako to izgleda sa zemlje, ali i zraka, pogledajte u našoj velikoj fotogaleriji. | {
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During the 'AIA Real Life: NOW Festival 2014' on August 15, the YG family stood up on stage for fun performances before their fans at Jamsil Olympic Stadium. WINNER performed their pre-debut song, "Just Another Boy," but there was also appearances by Team B, the team that lost to WINNER in survival program, 'WIN.'
Dressed in red and white, Team B said, "We've liked YG family since we were young, so it's like a dream that we got to be in the concert with them. These days, we are also practicing a lot and preparing for our debut. Please look forward to it. We were unable to sleep at all last night because we were looking forward to today.
We show our adoration and gratitude toward the people here who supported us. We will show you our diligence as the maknae of YG family. We congratulate WINNER on their debut. WINNER and we will work hard, so please look over us."
They then performed "Climax." | {
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Via Amazon Canada, we now have our first clear look at the upcoming special edition Prime Wars Trilogy Titans Return Deluxe Class Repugnus + Titan Master Dastard + Prime Master Solus Prime!
As previously suspected, Repugnus reuses some components from last year’s Twinferno (Doublecross) and Grotusque, and Solus Prime is a transparent version of the retail Solus Prime / Octopunch Prime Master core, but interestingly, Dastard appears to not be a reuse of the retail Repugnus Titan Master head.
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Thanks to Allsparkers The Supernova and Dr Syn for alerting us to this scoop.You can discuss this new figure on the Allspark Forums here , and if you’re a new user make sure to get an account here . Or if you prefer, jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or in our Facebook group | {
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